Thanks to everyone who read and to StyxxsOmega for reviewing.


"Whoa." Barry blinked, barely able to believe what he was seeing. "Dad!"

"Barry?" Dad's footsteps were heavy on the stairs. "What's wrong?"

"What? Nothing, but check it out. Apparently Mr. Marin finally approved me for some of the other kinds of community service."

That got him a decidedly exasperated look as Dad came around the corner.

"Oh. Sorry." Randomly shouting probably hadn't been the smartest thing that he could have done regardless of his level of surprise at the sudden list of available volunteer opportunities.

"Well, at least it's good news," Dad said, waving his apology off and coming to look over his shoulder.

"Yeah." He went back to scanning through them. "They've got sorting for a library book sale, some kind of orientation for the food bank, a whole bunch of different stuff."

"Anything look good to try next week? Or maybe this weekend, unless you were planning to invite Roddy over again?"

Barry had been hoping that Dad would have more time to hang out this weekend, but he also knew that the trial hadn't concluded until Wednesday so he'd kind of figured that that wouldn't be happening. "Nah, not this weekend," he said with a shrug. "Roddy already has plans tomorrow night, and then it sounded like there was some school stuff that he'd been putting off that he needed to get done too. Next weekend, though, maybe."

"Oh, right, tomorrow is Halloween. I wonder what Reinigen do."

Barry was confused by the apparent non-sequitur for a moment and then remembered that Halloween was a big holiday for some Wesen. It never had been for their family since Halloween didn't coincide with any Jagerbar-specific celebrations, and given how far they lived from town going out and meeting up with others on whatever night happened to coincide with October 31st would have been more of a hassle than anything else. "Actually I think it's more a music thing than a Halloween thing," he said, shrugging again. Roddy had asked him not to tell Nick about DJ'ing, which to be safe meant not going into detail with Dad either, but after everything he'd just as soon not lie.

"Ah." Dad patted his shoulder. "Well, dinner should be here in five or ten minutes, so why don't you find something to sign up for and then come upstairs and set the table."

Barry nodded and turned back to the computer screen. It didn't look like there was too much available this weekend anyway, possibly because of the holiday and possibly because others had already grabbed those slots, and all of the food bank ones listed some kind of required orientation that wasn't available until next Friday, but he grabbed a shift sorting books on Monday and then one listed as 'park cleanup' on Tuesday that he hoped would be a less annoying version of road cleanup. Or at least he hoped that the company might be better.

Dad was leaning on the counter when he got to the kitchen, staring at the laptop open in front of him, and Barry went to dig out some silverware. "Waiting for something important?"

"No, just trying to get some files in order for one of those appeals that I mentioned. The records division of the Portland police department is amazingly Byzantine in their approach to paperwork." He shook his head and shut the laptop. "I'll call them again tomorrow, I suppose, and try to catch them before they leave for the weekend."

"Are you going to have to work this weekend?" Barry checked. He assumed so, but he hadn't actually asked.

"Not all of it," Dad said after a minute. "Is there something that you'd like to do?"

And therein lay another problem, because even if Barry wanted to spend more time with his father, he still hadn't come up with any great ideas about what to spend it on. There were only so many movies two people could watch, and Dad had never been interested in video games. And not being able to leave the property meant that easy options like hiking or camping were out of the question. "I don't know, maybe pool or darts or something?" he said after a minute.

"Sure," Dad agreed immediately. "Although it's been a few years since I've played pool."

The doorbell rang before Barry could reply, which was probably just as well because the first thing that came to mind was that he'd gone a year without playing and had pretty much only had himself for competition since then. Neither of those were things that either of them needed to be reminded of.

They were a good portion of the way through the meal—Italian tonight—when Dad cleared his throat, and Barry looked up to find him looking surprisingly uncertain. "Dad? Are you okay?"

"It just occurred to me that there is something that I could use your help with this weekend. I've thought about it before, but I keep putting it off."

Barry frowned. "What?" He'd help Dad with anything that he wanted, that was kind of a given.

"All of those things that we've been packing away in my office? We need to go through them. You're welcome to keep anything that you'd like, of course, and obviously there are a few things that don't belong out among the general public, but there are also some things that at minimum need better storage conditions than a packing crate. And some that really ought to go to a museum or another collection if you aren't interested in keeping them."

"Oh."


Barry winced at the gouges on the crate he was prying open and very carefully did not look at his father. He wasn't an idiot, those hadn't appeared by accident, but he'd never seen Dad lose control enough to do something like that. Heck, he'd never seen Dad lose control at all. He still remembered a very long, very serious conversation they'd had about the importance of remembering his strength and maintaining his control the evening after a fourteen year old Barry had accidentally bowled Mom over tearing around the house completely oblivious to the fact that he'd just had a growth spurt that had left him a dozen pounds heavier than she was.

Fortunately the damaged crate, or at least this damaged crate, mostly seemed to hold balled up tapestries, and Barry carefully shook them out. Most were nothing special and Dad had probably moved them straight from the closet upstairs to the crate down here, but the last was a genuine antique, and he winced at a little at the ugly tear complete with fraying in the corner where it had apparently caught on a rough board. "I don't know who'd want those, but this one should probably go to a museum or a collector who can repair it."

Dad looked over and then sighed and muttered something that he probably wouldn't be pleased to hear Barry repeat. "Apparently I was even less careful than I realized."

There wasn't a lot that Barry could say to that, and he carefully re-folded the antique tapestry and moved it to the correct pile before putting the others in a separate box with the stack of items that were neither of museum quality nor requiring of special handling for Jagerbar-and-or-Wesen reasons.

Barry was starting to pry open another box, an undamaged one this time which at least didn't make him feel any worse, when he realized that Dad had gone still. He was kneeling in front of the same crate that he had been a minute ago, but he was staring down blankly into the box, and Barry hesitated. "Dad? Are you okay?"

"I—yeah. Yeah." He shook his head and gave a grimace that was probably supposed to be a smile, pulling a little statue out of the box carefully. "I think this is the first thing that your mother and I ever bought together."

Barry recognized the statue easily enough, but not as anything more than one of the myriad of wooden figures that had always been scattered around the house. "When?" he asked cautiously. Dad hadn't exactly talked much about Mom since he'd gotten home.

Then again, neither had he.

"On our honeymoon." A hint of a smile crossed Dad's face. "It was supposed to be the start of our week in Freudenstadt, but there was some bad weather and we ended up snowed in at an inn in a little town an hour or so away instead. There was this tiny gallery across the street, and..." He shook his head. "They were reluctant to sell, but your mother convinced them."

He sighed and any sign of happiness faded as he looked at the statue again for several long moments and then stood and put it with the things to be sent to museums or collectors.

"You don't want to keep it?" Barry asked.

He hesitated and then shook his head.

"Can...can I? Mom told me about the history—like the history history—behind some of this stuff, but she never told me anything like that." Of course, with a lot of the stuff he hadn't needed to be told where it had come from, he'd been dragged to plenty of collectors' galleries and art shows and museums over the years, but that was different. But if Dad didn't want it in the house, he didn't want to make things worse.

"Of course," Dad said firmly. "You're welcome to keep anything that you'd like."

Barry nodded, retrieving the little statue and taking it up to his room to stand on his dresser. He didn't have any interest in turning his room back into the shrine of Jagerbar history that it had been before everything, but the one little figure was okay.

Dad was sorting through a new box when he got back down to the office, and Barry went back to the crate he'd started to open before he and Dad had started talking, but it was suddenly hard to focus. "Do you miss her?" he found himself asking.

"What?" Dad turned to look at him. "Your mother? Of course."

Barry hesitated. "Are you angry?" He hadn't dared ask before, not when there was no way that the answer wasn't yes, but he hadn't meant to ask the other question either.

Dad sighed, rocking back on his heels. "Some, I suppose. We were married for twenty-three years and had known each other for more than half-a-dozen before that, and I never knew..." He trailed off, probably because of the confusion on Barry's face.

"Why would you be mad at Mom?"

"Who else—" This time he broke off with a much sharper shake of his head. "No, cub. Not at you."

"But it was all my fault."

Barry heard his voice crack over the last word, and Dad stood, tugging Barry up and hugging him hard before letting him go again. "No, it wasn't. Oh, I'm not saying that what you boys did was in any way a good idea—you're too smart for that, and we both know it—but I don't believe for one second that the idea would even have crossed your mind without your mother's input."

Barry tried to shake his head. It wasn't...he couldn't say that Dad was wrong, but they'd been the ones to dig the pit trap, to grab the creeps who'd broken into the house, all of that. Not her.

"And I damn well should have been paying more attention too," Dad continued. "It just never occurred to me that anyone still treated those old rituals as anything other than ancient history. I laughed in Detective Burkhardt's face when he brought it up."

That was a surprise to Barry, and Dad must have seen it because he shook his head slightly.

"Your mother's family was always more traditional than mine, I realized that within about five minutes of meeting them. It was very much a point of contention when we got married, and then when you were a baby as well, although you wouldn't remember that. But then after her parents died it just it never came up again." A sigh. "Maybe if we'd talked, if I'd realized where things were going, we could have found some compromise."

Barry wasn't quite sure how you compromised on kidnapping, never mind murder, but Dad shook his head again before he could say anything.

"I can't say that I wasn't angry with you at first, but you more than paid for any mistakes that you made."

"But Mom..."

"Is gone. And nothing either of us can do can change that."

Barry felt his breath start to catch again, and Dad wrapped an arm around his shoulders. "I think we've done enough here today. How about we go try that game of pool you suggested?"

Barry leaned into his grip.