Thanks to everyone who read and to Priyanka for reviewing.
"I didn't pick a fight," Barry said, making sure to keep his hands flat on the table even if he couldn't keep the tension out of his voice.. There were no police around and he wasn't in handcuffs, and he very much wanted both of those things to remain true. "I didn't fight at all."
"Then how did Walker end up on the ground?" the supervisor from the volunteer shift that he'd been on up until about half an hour ago—the one that he was supposed to still be on—demanded, glaring at him.
"I don't know. I didn't even know that he was there until he was trying to shove me into the road, so I'm guessing he just underestimated my weight and overbalanced." An easy enough thing to do when you were talking about a human and a Jagerbar, although it still didn't explain how the whole situation had come about in the first place.
"He tried to shove you into the road?" Mr. Marin's expression was skeptical. "Just out of the blue?"
"I guess? I don't know," Barry repeated. "I don't even know who he is." Beyond that some portion of his name was Walker, anyway, and he hadn't even learned that much until everything was over. "He wasn't partnered with us or anything, it was only Ray and I who'd been assigned to that stretch of road. And we were busy trying to clean up a pile of broken glass when the guy...appeared." Obviously he must have been with them on the bus from the parole office given that he'd been wearing the same Department of Corrections safety vest as everyone else, but nothing about him had been familiar to Barry.
"So he was after Turner?"
That was the shift supervisor again, and Barry shrugged helplessly. "I don't know." That idea actually sounded pretty stupid because Ray was like sixty or seventy or something—old enough that Barry would have been calling him Mr. Turner if he hadn't insisted otherwise—but Barry had no good explanation for anything that had happened this afternoon and didn't see himself being able to coming up with one that would somehow suit them. Except that he most definitely hadn't been trying to knock this Walker person down; it wasn't his fault that he was a lot more solid than most people realized.
Of course, it was just Barry's luck that the shift supervisor had looked their way at exactly the same moment that Walker had hit the ground, and he'd immediately turned the volunteer shift over to his backup, hauled all three of them back to the parole offices, and called their parole officers. Barry didn't know where the other two men had ended up and found it kind of hard to care, because he'd been left sitting alone in this tiny room until Mr. Marin had arrived, and once he had it had been pretty obvious that the shift supervisor was putting all of the blame on him. And as much as he was trying to stay calm, he was well aware that if Mr. Marin felt like it he could violate him on the spot and have him back on the bus to the prison tonight. Parolees didn't have much in the way of rights—per his lawyer innocent until proven guilty didn't always apply to someone who'd already been found guilty and was serving out his sentence—and while Barry had texted both Kevin and Dad, he hadn't gotten a reply from either of them. And he didn't get to refuse or even delay anything about this interrogation unless he wanted to hop straight onto the prison bus anyway. Barry felt himself start to woge and fought it back. Even if both Mr. Marin and the shift supervisor were human, he couldn't afford to lose any kind of control.
"But you know Turner," the shift supervisor said. "Has he ever mentioned him?"
"I don't, really," Barry corrected. "We just met today when we started work. We did talk a little while we were walking, and he told me that he lives with his daughter and her family and that he wants to get his grandchildren a rabbit for Christmas, but that's about it."
Mr. Marin frowned. "Are you sure? According to records, your times served overlapped."
Because of course that lookup was one that he was able to do quickly. Barry shook his head. "If I ever met him, I don't remember him. There are a lot of people in there, and I spent most of my time working on the loading docks and doing school stuff." At least when he hadn't been sitting in his cell staring at the wall, anyway. "Ray's older than almost anyone doing any of that."
"And after you got out?"
Barry shrugged again. "I'm very sure that I was never partnered with him for anything before, but there are usually forty or fifty guys on the buses so it's possible that he was around other times when I was doing trash pickup. Or maybe back when I was doing graffiti scrubbing, although I haven't done much of that since my first month. But if we did cross paths we never talked, and lately I've been doing almost all of my volunteer hours at the food bank where I never see anyone." And suddenly that was a good thing; didn't that just figure?
Last night he'd been both surprised and happy to see an open shift on road cleanup this afternoon since while knocking off thirty-some hours working the rest of the week at the food bank had been great from a calendar perspective, it had also been dull as dirt. Lift-turn-place, lift-turn-place, never see another person and run through all of Roddy's music multiple times, lift-turn-place. The idea of getting outside for a while and stretching his legs some before going back for a couple more days next week had sounded awfully good, all things considered. And Ray hadn't been a bad guy to be partnered with, at least in the short time that Barry had been working with him. Barry had been the one to get stuck carrying their collecting bag, sure, but he would have offered anyway, and it wasn't like he'd minded hearing about the guy's grandchildren.
But no, some jerk had gone and tried to pick a fight for reasons that Barry still had no clue about, and now here he sat with the very real chance that he was going to get dragged back to hell despite everything. Oh, they'd have to give him a violation hearing eventually, and hopefully Kevin would be able to make a good argument for the judge, but Barry could be stuck back in there for weeks before that happened. He could be stuck for another Christmas. He started to woge again.
"But if you're insisting that you just met Ray and claiming that you don't know Walker either, what exactly triggered the incident earlier?"
That was the shift supervisor, all accusatory again, but this time Barry didn't actually mind the man's interjection since it at least pulled his mind away from the edge of panic. Kevin had told him before he got out the first time that even accidental parole violations could carry a thirty day remand, especially if the violation hearing landed in front of a tough judge, and considering what his original guilty plea had been for and the fact that this was being called fighting….
"Maybe you exchanged some words on the bus?" the shift supervisor pressed.
"No," Barry insisted. "You'll have to ask him why he did what he did, because I've never met him before. I don't even know if Walker's his first or last name. And I'm sure he must have been on the bus, but I didn't notice him never mind talk to him or argue with him or anything like that." Considering that the shift supervisor had also been on the bus with them, if anything had happened he'd already know about it anyway. "The first time I saw him was when he was trying to shove me into the road, and then he was in the dirt."
The two men exchanged glances, and Barry felt his phone vibrate against his leg, but he didn't dare pull it out while they were still facing him.
"You said that you've been working at the food bank recently?" Mr. Marin asked.
A little bit of an odd change of topic, but at least it was finally a question that Barry could answer confidently. "Yes. Every day this week except today, and then I'm on the schedule for Monday through Wednesday next week too."
"Why not today? Or next Thursday or Friday?"
"All the work today was unloading trucks at the smaller pantries around the city, and I'm not cleared for that. And next week is finals week for me. I've got history on Thursday and calculus on Friday, plus my final English paper is due Friday too." Granted that he could practically fail the history test and still have an A in the class, and his English assignment was about ready to be turned in too, but open book or not the calculus was going to take some time.
The shift supervisor looked surprised, but Mr. Marin only nodded slightly. "Can anyone speak to your work there?"
"Mrs. Young," Barry said immediately. "She's the volunteer coordinator, and she's there pretty much every day."
"And she won't report any incidents of any sort?"
"No. In fact she specifically asked me before I left yesterday to sign up for the shifts next week since they've had so many donations coming in for the holidays that they need the help, and she likes my work." That was why he'd been on the community service website last night in the first place. And even if liking his work just meant that he moved more stuff faster than most people, right now he couldn't see a compliment about his volunteer work hurting him.
Mr. Marin seemed to consider for a moment and then finally nodded again. "Well, you can go for now, but understand that fighting while on parole is absolutely unacceptable. At some point within the next ninety days you'll be scheduled for a violation hearing, and I expect that I'll be interviewing you again before that as well. Depending on our conversation and the results of that hearing, you may have amendments made to your parole conditions, or you may be recommitted for some or all of your remaining sentence."
Barry felt his control start to slip again, because obviously, but he managed to keep his outward response to a quick nod. "I understand." At least it didn't sound like he'd be sent back tonight. Small favors.
The shift supervisor looked like he wanted to object, but Mr. Marin continued before he could say anything. "And if there are any other incidents prior to your hearing, you'll be remanded immediately regardless of circumstance. Additionally, I'm rescinding your approval for any more shifts on road cleanup until this matter has been settled, and I suggest that you confine yourself to only fully supervised community service activities for the same amount of time."
"I understand," Barry repeated. Being stuck back on graffiti scrubbing was ridiculously low on the list of things that he cared about given all of the other possible ramifications of what had happened today. "But would it be okay for me to finish the shifts that I'm already signed up for at the food bank?" he checked. "Like I said, Mrs. Young specifically asked me to be there."
Mr. Marin hesitated and then nodded. "I'll tentatively agree, but I'll be speaking to her myself and if there have been any issues that approval will be rescinded as well."
Barry nodded quickly.
The two men excused themselves and left, possibly—probably—to go talk to Ray and Walker, but Barry wasn't about to stick around to find out what came of that. Right now he just wanted to be home.
Barry bolted up from the couch when he heard the garage door opening, all but running upstairs. The message he'd missed while in the parole offices had been from Kevin, and while Barry had called him back and they'd set up a time for Kevin to come to the house tomorrow to talk through everything, Kevin very much hadn't been the person that he'd wanted to hear from at that point. But Dad hadn't responded at all, not even when Barry had sent a second text, and...he was too old for it, maybe, heck, he'd survived an entire year alone in prison when you got right down to it, but he needed Dad.
"Hello," Dad greeted, obviously in response to Barry's footsteps since his focus was clearly on the bankers' boxes in his arms and the briefcase and bag of takeout balanced on top of the stack. "Would you mind going out and grabbing the last three boxes out of the trunk for—" He looked over the stack at Barry and his expression shifted abruptly. "What happened?"
Barry shook his head, suddenly unable to speak, and Dad all but dropped everything he'd been carrying and reached for him.
"What happened, cub?"
"I didn't," was all Barry could manage, and he was also too old to be crying on his father's shoulder, but even thinking about going back to that place made him sick, and his attempts to stop shaking were beyond unsuccessful.