Thanks to everyone who read and to M1ssUnd3rst4nd1ng, StyxxsOmega, and Priyanka for reviewing.


Barry nodded politely at yet another warning about trying to lift too much, despite the fact that with some of these boxes you'd have to add a whole other zero before there was any danger of him having trouble moving them, and then Mrs. Young was off to greet the next corporate volunteer group. He waited until she was out of sight before sticking his headphones into his ears and clicking over to one of Roddy's mixes.

Mrs. Young had said that corporate groups were pretty typical at the food bank around the holidays, businesses wanting some good press, maybe a picture or two for their websites, that kind of thing, and thus far what he'd seen this week confirmed that. But seeing as it hadn't stopped him from getting his name on the schedule for every day except Friday he didn't really care. Heck, even skipping Friday had been his choice; between the rush of holiday donations coming in and the organizers scrambling to make sure that the community pantries were as overstocked as possible going into next week there was plenty of work to do. He had a history test that he hadn't done much studying for, though, and even if he wasn't really worried about it, he figured that he shouldn't cut things too close.

He took a quick look around. Although as long as there were groups of people volunteering here, he wouldn't mind actually getting to interact with some of them. Or literally any of them. Not that he didn't appreciate the trust of the people who ran the warehouse, assuming that's what it was and not just an attempt to keep a guy with a felony conviction away from any possible confrontations, but a little conversation here and there would be nice. Even if the graffiti crews he'd worked with had been kind of antisocial, at least they'd been present.

Despite his hopes there was no sign of anyone coming to join him, though, just shelves and boxes and pallets, and with another sigh he bumped his music volume up a little more and focused on the work.

He'd gotten through all of the boxes of generic stuffing—those would have needed a couple zeros before they'd reach anything that he'd consider heavy—and had just started on the crates of condensed milk when movement caught his eye. He twisted back, hitting the pause button on his player. "Hello?"

There was no response for a moment, but when he focused there was definitely someone behind the stack of crates, and then a girl stuck her head out. She was probably a couple years younger than he was, and far more interestingly her eyes were shining red.

Barry's own façade slipped unintentionally for a moment as well, and when she reared back he set his current box of cans down quickly and held up his hands. "Hey, it's okay. I'm Barry. Sorry, I didn't mean to startle you." Not that she hadn't technically been the one to startle him, but whatever. Details.

It took a long minute for her to woge, and then she shrugged and focused on something just over his left shoulder. "Holly."

"Hey, Holly." It was his turn to hesitate. "Are you part of one of the volunteer groups today? Like with your school or something?" It seemed pretty unlikely that she was with one of the corporate groups, even as an intern, but he didn't see how she could be a regular employee either.

Shoulder twitch, and then her eyes met his again and she gestured vaguely down one of the aisles. "No school today. Mother working. Helping."

Your mom works here? Or is volunteering here?"

A nod, although she didn't indicate which of his questions she was agreeing too.

He was getting the distinct impression that there was something a little bit...atypical...about her, but even he knew that that wasn't the sort of thing that you just came out and asked. "Is she looking for you?" he tried instead.

Headshake.

"Well, as long as you're here, do you want to help me?"

She pointed at his head. "With music."

"Oh, you want to listen to the music?" That would explain how she'd found him; he'd had it playing pretty loud—probably louder than it really should have been for something that was being piped directly into his ears—and a Blutbad's hearing would be at least as good as his. "Um, sure." He took off the player quickly and set it on top of a stack of boxes that he hadn't yet gotten to, angling the headphones towards them and checking that this was the cleanest of the three playlists before bumping the volume up as high as it would go. Dad might still frown a little over a couple of the words in some of the lyrics, but they weren't anything that he'd feel bad about playing for a kid anywhere near his age. His headphones didn't approach a radio, obviously, but it was audible enough to him and obviously to her as well as she began to bounce lightly in place. And then since she looked at him expectantly, he pointed her towards which boxes went where.

Holly wasn't any more talkative than his previous work companions had been, but she was at least another person in the same vicinity, and he didn't mind the occasional cheerful off-tune humming.

Between the two of them they finished splitting the condensed milk between pallets and made a pretty good dent in the canned vegetables as well, and then Holly's head jerked up and she twisted to look down the same aisle she'd pointed down before. "Mom!"

A woman with dark hair and features that didn't look much like Holly's to Barry's eyes came around the far corner a moment later. "There you are." She hurried towards them. "I—" She broke off with a frown, looking at Barry.

Barry didn't recognize her, but then again he still had no idea if she actually worked here or if she was one of today's corporate volunteers. And even if she did work here, it wasn't like he'd ever talked to anyone except Mrs. Young and occasionally Ben when the guy was in the office when Barry was checking in and out. "Hey. Um, I'm Barry. Rabe. Holly was just helping me."

"Music," Holly said, pointing at Barry's player.

Holly's mother frowned at the headphones for a moment and then shook her head and muttered a quiet, "I have got to get my ears checked."

It was kind of a weird thing for a Blutbad to say, but his brain caught up an instant later and he winced because Mom would have had a fit over a display of manners this bad from him. It was obviously different with someone whose status he didn't know, or even just another kid, but he was technically an adult now, and on the slightly more than off chance that he was another apex predator in her workplace... He stepped back and moved his hands into a no-threat position before woging and nodding politely. Which she didn't even seem to notice, but Holly sure as heck snarled, and he retracted immediately. "Sorry, I didn't mean to—"

"Holly, that is not how we behave!" Holly's mother—Barry still had no idea what her name was—exclaimed, tugging on Holly's arm. "Remember what Dr. Newton said?" She turned back towards Barry. "I'm so sorry, that's a...problem...that we're still working on."

"No, it's, uh, it's fine," Barry said. "I didn't mean to startle her."

"You didn't do anything," she said firmly, which pretty solidly confirmed that she had to be Kehrseite. And while he sort of knew that it was possible for humans and Wesen to have children, it wasn't something that he'd ever personally encountered.

It was probably technically even ruder than not properly acknowledging another predator on their territory, but he couldn't help but stare as she insisted that Holly calm down, and he barely managed to look away in time as she swiveled back to face him.

"It was nice to meet you, but I'm afraid that my group just finished up and the two of us need to be going. Holly, say goodbye to your friend. We need to hurry if we're going to make it to your appointment on time."

The red finally faded from her eyes again, and whatever this appointment was she didn't seem to object as she raised her hand immediately. "Goodbye."

"Bye," he returned. "It was nice to meet you." It was nice not to have worked by himself all afternoon, even if she hadn't been much of a conversationalist. According to his watch he only had half an hour left on his own shift, though, and he ended up sticking his headphones back into his ears and picking up speed as much as he could to finish the vegetables before he had to go.

He didn't quite make it, but he was close, and Mrs. Young seemed pleased enough when he stopped in the office to sign out and let her know. For a moment he debated mentioning Holly, but from what her still-unnamed mother had said it had sounded like they were with one of the volunteer groups rather than her being a food bank employee, and in the end it wasn't like there was really anything to be said anyway. Well, except that he'd enjoyed not working alone, but since he still wasn't sure that that wasn't intentional...

The warehouse was far enough from the city center that it had a small parking lot, and he climbed back into his truck and debated what to pick up for dinner. There was a chicken place that he'd seen scrolling through restaurants yesterday that had looked interesting.

Order texted in, he checked the map and then turned the truck on. He should have plenty of time to—

He frowned. The dashboard lights always flickered when he first turned the truck on, but they equally always went off within a couple seconds. This time that didn't seem to be happening.

Tapping the dash didn't accomplish anything, and neither did turning the truck off and then on again, and he scowled at the trio of orange symbols. He knew that he had plenty of gas; he'd just filled up yesterday. And the gas gauge agreed with him. None of them were the tire warning light, either, because he'd seen that once when he and the twins had taken the truck off road up in the forest and he'd misjudged an obstacle in their path and blown one completely out. But something was clearly wrong, and damned if he knew what he was supposed to do about it. He'd seen plenty of people on the side of the road with their hoods open or whatever, but even if he opened up the engine, he wouldn't have a clue what he was looking for. Mom and Dad had always taken the vehicles into the shop for any required maintenance.

He looked at the lights again. He could try driving home anyway, but he kind of didn't want his truck to blow up in the middle of the road or anything like that, and after a few minutes he dug his phone back out and texted Dad. Dad wasn't in court today, Barry was sure of that much, but he wouldn't answer if he was meeting with a client or his partners or anything like that, either.

Fortunately his phone rang almost immediately, and he put it to his ear. "Dad?"


Barry let out a slow breath. He was being stupid about this, and he knew it. It wasn't like he'd never driven Mom's car before. Heck, if you wanted to get technical he'd learned to drive in Mom's car. His truck had been a present for his sixteenth birthday, and he'd already had his learner's permit for like six or eight months by then.

But he hadn't been in it since she'd died. Up until last night no one had been in it since she'd died; Dad hadn't even been starting it once a month like he had Barry's truck while Barry had been gone, and if he hadn't found the old wall charger Barry would be calling for a jump start right now.

Barry stared down through the driver's side window. He could just call and cancel his shift at the food bank today. It wouldn't be that big a deal, it was his last shift of the week and with all this week's corporate volunteer groups they'd probably be fine without him. But he'd put his name on the sign-up form, and he'd feel kind of bad skipping out on them just because he couldn't...

He shook his head and then made himself reach for the handle because there probably wasn't a good reason that he couldn't get there, but he hadn't actually proven that yet. His truck was in the shop because other than starting it up every now and again Dad hadn't done anything with it, and apparently leaving engine oil sitting for a year and then suddenly taking a vehicle out driving again regularly without changing it didn't do great things for the engine. It could have been worse, the shop owner had assured them that they'd have it back after Thanksgiving no worse for wear, but it was a good thing that the warning lights had come on when they had. And that Dad had had it towed to a shop while Barry had taken an uber home, because while it was fixable now, with too much more travel it could have ended up with permanent engine damage.

Neither Dad nor Barry figured that Mom's car was in any better shape, but since his truck had lasted a couple months before having problems they also both figured that it would be usable enough for the couple trips that Barry might need to make until he got his truck back. And once they had Barry's truck then they'd send Mom's car in and get it all fixed up too, and then they'd be back to having three cars for two people. Which was... Barry shook his head. Whatever. Not the point.

The door opened, and Barry reached down to slide the seat back, but Dad must have done that last night when he'd first tried to start it. Barry gritted his teeth and slid inside and tried to pretend that his eyes didn't start to burn when he looked down and saw Mom's smiling face looking up at him from the museum pass tucked neatly inside the cup holder.