Thanks to everyone who read and to Priyanka for reviewing.

Contains some mention of To Protect and Serve Man (episode 2.11) although it takes place afterwards.

Also, no corresponding update to What Strange Creatures this time. Trying to fit all of this into just ch. 27 made it unwieldy so so it became both 27 and 28, but that meant that the timing stopped lining up so this is a singleton, and the paired chapters should start again next time.


"If I ever saw either of them before that shift, I don't remember them," Barry repeated. "Ray and I introduced ourselves when we started work, but I didn't even know Walker's name until the shift supervisor said it." The shift supervisor whose name he also didn't know, and he still couldn't believe that he hadn't noticed that omission until Kevin had asked.

Kevin had been taking notes since they'd started talking so it wasn't like any of this was new, but Dad had told him back after the Roh-hatz, that it was important that his lawyer know all of the details, even the ones that might seem irrelevant. Even the ones that he might not want Mom or Dad to know, although he'd pretty well sworn off that since everything so Dad had heard all of this last night. But while Barry was willing to talk, there just wasn't a lot to say. Some guy had tried to push him out into the road while he'd been collecting trash and had fallen down when Barry had straightened. That was really all there was to it.

Kevin, however, was showing no signs of getting bored with the repeated statements. "And Walker never said anything to you when he tried to shove you?"

"No. I'm pretty sure I said 'What the heck' or something like that, but he was quiet."

"And you never put your hands on him? Not even to block his shove?"

"No. I didn't even know that he was there until his hands were on me." Which he'd say was kind of impressive since it wasn't usually so easy to sneak up on a Jagerbar, but all Barry had really been paying attention to aside from the glass on the roadside was keeping an eye out for any cars that might swerve out of their lanes. "I stood up, and he…." Barry shrugged.

"And that's when the shift supervisor ordered you all back to the bus?"

"Right after he fell, yeah."

Barry was expecting to have to go over the 'No, no one talked on the bus, and this is what I said to Mr. Marin after we got to the parole offices' part of the spiel again, but much to his relief Kevin finally put his pen down. "All right, I think I have what I need. Would you'd like to ask your father to rejoin us?"

Barry nodded quickly. Dad had absented himself as soon as Kevin had settled in to ask questions about the incident because of the confidentiality requirements between a lawyer and his client, but if he was allowed back, Barry very much wanted him there. And Dad must have been waiting, because as soon as Barry started up the staircase he came out of his room.

"Is it all right if I come down again?"

"Yeah."

Dad nodded and Barry couldn't help but feel guilty about how stiffly he was moving. It was one thing for Barry to sleep on the floor or the too-short couch in the basement, but Dad was older and a lot less flexible. Especially since they'd never gotten around to bringing out the sleeping bags or anything like that. Selfishly Barry was glad that Dad had stayed with him through however many stupid movies it had been last night because he'd been tossing and turning and on the edge of a panic for longer than he cared to think about, but he should have gotten over himself and gone up to bed so Dad could—would—do the same. Dad didn't seem to care, though, wrapping an arm around his shoulders when he reached the landing where Barry waited, and Barry leaned in automatically. He knew he'd screwed up bad before, but it was all coming back now, and this time he hadn't even done anything.

They rejoined Kevin at the dining table, and Kevin tapped the pad in front of him lightly and then started speaking before either of them could say anything. "To me this sounds like a very bad case of wrong place, wrong time, and possibly some very bad judgment on the part of this Mr. Walker, although I'll request copies of both Mr. Walker's and Mr. Turner's statements to see what they have to say about it all. And I'll also do some digging to see if they have any history with each other or if Mr. Walker has a history of picking fights in general." He looked at Barry. "In his case I may look into known acquaintances as well and be contacting you to see if you recognize any of them. It would be good to know if this was part of an ongoing pattern of his or if he might have targeted you for a particular reason, even one that was only inside his own head."

Dad nodded, and it wasn't like Barry could argue. It was as good a guess as anything for what had started the whole mess.

"What about this shift supervisor?" Dad asked. "Shouldn't he know who he assigned to work together and that Walker shouldn't have been anywhere near them in the first place?"

"From the sounds of it it was less specific assignments and more that the men were just asked to break out into pairs before they headed out, but I agree that three certainly isn't two, and once he was aware that Walker wasn't paired with Barry and Mr. Turner his focus on Barry seems a bit overbearing. But Barry was the one left standing, and if he only saw what he thought was a confrontation...under the circumstances it's not an unreasonable response for someone in his position. But I'll be sure to get a copy of his statement too."

Dad didn't look happy—then again, neither was Barry—but he did nod again. "So what happens now?"

"Well, as you know, there'll be a parole violation hearing. Depending on the results of that, there may be nothing that changes, there may be some form of alteration to Barry's parole agreement, or he may be recomitted for some amount of time."

Barry swallowed hard.

"The most important thing will be for Barry to keep his nose clean until the hearing," Kevin continued, and then looked at Barry again. "And I mean completely clean. I know that you haven't had any problems so me saying this is probably just a formality, but make sure that you keep it that way, even if it means backing off on your community service work or only signing up for supervised—or better supervised, I suppose—opportunities."

Barry nodded. "Mr. Marin said that I should do that anyway."

"Good." He paused. "We'll talk more when you get the official notice of violation and we can see exactly what we're dealing with, but I think you mentioned that you had finals coming up. How are your grades?"

"English and history should be As. Calculus probably not, but I might be able to get a B."

"Keeping it to a B at minimum would be preferable. Good grades demonstrate responsibility and focus, especially since you're continuing to build on what you'd done before. I assume that you're signed up for more classes next semester?"

"Yeah, there's a short online English class that runs through January, and then I'm enrolled in four for the spring term. But I don't know…." He trailed off and stared past Kevin out the window. "Three of them are in-person at the college. Should I drop them and look for all online stuff?"

Kevin hesitated. "I'm not going to suggest that you drop them just yet, but it might not be the worst idea to have a backup plan. Just in case."

It wasn't what Barry had wanted to hear, but it was an answer, and he nodded again.

"The community service he's done has to speak well for him too," Dad said. "Especially since the woman from the food bank specifically asked for him."

"It does," Kevin agreed. "And I'll pull the official records before we have to appear, but do you have a general idea where you are in your hours?"

"A hundred and fifty-four signed off as of this morning. I checked. And Mr. Marin said I could still do the shifts Mrs. Young asked me to sign up for at the food bank next week so that should knock off another twenty-four or so even if I don't do anything else for a while."

"Excellent, that puts you well ahead of where people typically are at this point in their parole. Would this Mrs. Young give you a recommendation if you asked?"

"I think so? I mean, she did ask for me, so I'd hope so." There was that whole thing where he was never assigned to work with any other volunteers, but it wasn't like it was based on anything so hopefully it wouldn't matter. "And there's a girl I tutor, too, if that helps."

"It certainly can't hurt. I won't reach to out them or ask you to do so until we have more information about the hearing, but please send me their details when you get a chance. And as soon as the notice of violation arrives, call me and we'll set up another meeting."

"We will. And you'll let us know about the statements that you receive?" Dad asked.

"I will."

Dad hesitated, and then, "Given everything, what do you think the most likely outcome of the hearing is going to be?"

It was what Barry wanted to know too and had just been too afraid to ask, and Kevin's sigh wasn't exactly reassuring.

"With almost any other potential violation, especially a first occurrence, I could pretty much guarantee you that it would be dismissed. Given the lack of any other sort of complaints and the positive showings with regards to both his schoolwork and community service, there's just nothing that would give a judge pause. Oh, they might issue a warning, possibly even extend house arrest by some token amount, but the courts like to see people succeeding on parole. Unfortunately with this specific offense...as I said, it seems like a case of wrong place, wrong time, and I'll certainly make the best display of that that I can as well as point to his otherwise-sterling record, but there's a good chance that it'll come down to which judge we're assigned. Now, even in a worst-case scenario I don't see any kind of long-term recommit coming out of this, but thirty or sixty days isn't out of the question."

Barry's fingers curled and he felt his features waver because those options sounded plenty long to him, but Dad only let out a slow breath. "And when do you think the hearing will be?"

"I haven't seen the court docket, but since the backlog from the Thanksgiving mess is just getting cleared out and there's another set of holidays coming up, we're probably looking at late January. Unless his parole officer pushes for something earlier, but since he didn't immediately violate Barry—also a good sign, for the record—that seems unlikely." He paused. "We could request an earlier hearing ourselves, but I see very little benefit in this case."

"Could you elaborate?" Dad asked.

"Given the nature of violation hearings, it's likely to be just the parole officer and potentially this shift supervisor who'll speak against Barry, and I'll be the one bringing in the witnesses and character evidence. They don't need the time to gather evidence, but waiting gives me more time to talk to people and Barry to continue with his solid record." He looked at Barry again. "Although from a logistics perspective, if you'd rather risk a short recommit with only one class in progress…."

"If it comes to that I'll probably have to switch back to online classes anyway," Barry said. "And I don't want to do it any sooner than I have to." He didn't want to do it at all, and if they did decide to send him back there he didn't know how he'd survive, but he'd already spent most of last night curled up next to Dad and wasn't going to let himself break down again in front of both of them.

"Then we're in agreement," Kevin said with a nod.

After that there wasn't much more to be said so Kevin took his leave of them, and as he drove off down the driveway, Barry leaned into Dad again.


"How's the studying going?" Dad asked.

Barry twisted back and tried to smile at him, but he suspected that it looked about as real as Dad's. "Okay. I recognize all of the questions, anyway." And he could even mostly answer them. But he was so jittery that he kep making stupid mistakes—things that even he recognized as stupid mistakes—and that was only making him even more jittery. And even if a judge who wanted to recommit him probably wouldn't care about the difference between a B or a C anyway…. He'd tried running the driveway and that hadn't helped, and neither had lifting weights, so at this point he was just going to keep working at the damn things until he ran out of options for mistakes. Dad was still standing at the door, though, a banker's box in his arms, and Barry made himself return to the present. "What's that for?"

"Files from the Public Defender's Office. Do you mind if I join you?"

"No, of course not." He hesitated. "You had a bunch of those, didn't you? Boxes, I mean." At least he vaguely remembered Dad with a stack of them when he'd gotten home on Friday, although his focus had been elsewhere for obvious reasons.

"I did, and I do." Dad settled in on the couch beside him and put the box on the floor at his feet, setting the lid aside. "I think I told you that I was looking over some appeals for them that qualified for representation?"

"Yeah, sure. Those are more of that?"

"Sort of. I don't know how much you might have seen in the news, but there was a capital case here in Portland that was just reopened, and some of the claims of the man who'd been convicted were proven true just in time to stay his execution. And I mean that extremely literally. Apparently his victim—or victims; there were two although only one died at the time—were in some sort of serial-killing partnership, which makes his assertions of self-defense suddenly seem far more reasonable."

"For real?" Barry didn't watch the news much unless Dad flipped it on, and he definitely hadn't heard anything about that. "How'd they miss that the first time?"

"Well, most of my information comes from what I read in the paper so there aren't a lot of details available, but I saw Nick and his partner mentioned as part of the investigation so I suspect there are some special circumstances involved."

"Oh. Yeah." Not that Barry was any kind of expert, but depending on the Wesen involved he could think of several cases where the term serial killer might apply.

"Anyway, as you might expect the case has drawn quite a bit of attention, and it's triggered a review of a whole bunch of other cases. Several boxes of which got to come home with me on Friday."

And none of which he'd done anything with since he'd been worried about Barry, and Barry couldn't help but feel a little guilty.

"There's nothing anywhere near as critical as the case that was just re-investigated, so I'm not in a great rush," he continued as if he'd read Barry's mind, "but I'll probably be spending some time over the next few weeks reading through everything." He frowned. "You know, now that I think about it, I did leave a message for Nick a couple days ago, but I haven't heard back."

"I don't know anything about his work," Barry said as Dad pulled out his phone to double check, "but apparently there was something going on with him and his girlfriend and a Hexenbiest and somehow his partner, so he might be a little bit busy."

"His girlfriend and a Hexenbiest?" Dad stared. "Where did that come from?"

"Roddy told me. He usually goes to Monroe's on Thursdays, but he couldn't last week. It didn't sound like he knew a lot either, except that things were really awkward over there so they were going to go out for dinner instead."

"That's right, Nick did say that he was staying with Monroe because of some problems at home." Dad tucked his phone back into his pocket. "Maybe I'll wait another day or two before I try again." A pause. "Did Roddy say anything else?"

"Avoid Hundjagers."

"I...suppose that's good advice in the general sense?"

"I don't know." Barry shook his head. "I don't think Roddy did either, it's just something Monroe told him."

"Ah. Have you talked to him since Friday? Roddy, I mean?"

"No. This is the weekend where they're doing the ballet a bunch of times, plus his finals are next week too so I doubt I could even get him on the phone. He's going to come over next Saturday after everything's done, so we'll talk then." Assuming Barry could even figure out how to explain it all, anyway. At least Roddy already knew about the whole prison thing from before so that wasn't likely to freak him out. Probably.