Unlike so many others, he and the others had the comfort of a burial. They'd been able to see and touch the body. They had a place where they could put flowers and pebbles. He'd brought the flowers. The pebbles told anyone who cared to notice how many times Willow had paid her own visits to the grave. He'd seen scraps of paper tucked into the earth next to the tombstone, and a couple of shattered bottles of whiskey within easy tossing distance of the grave. After looking at one of the bits of paper, he had scrupulously left the rest untouched and unread. Also, someone other than him had worked at keeping the gravesite tidy--grass carefully hand-trimmed, weeds pulled, dead flowers removed from a bouquet he'd brought the week before. One time, there had even been a small stack of split-open Oreos and a half-empty box of apple juice placed so carefully in front of the tombstone that no one would have mistaken it for trash.
After Buffy come back from the dead, these little touches no longer appeared. There was no more need for them, after all.
He was happy beyond happy to have Buffy back, but there were others he should visit, others who didn't have graves that could be tended, who didn't have a place where you could leave Oreos, spill your tears, read crappy love poetry, or rage against the unfairness of this world.
There were too many people in this town who only had an unmussed bed or an empty chair, and no explanations. They never had a viewing or a burial, not even a secret one. They didn't have resurrection spells, only some desk jockey at the police department telling them that even though the case was still officially open, all leads had gone cold.
There were too many people who would never know that someone they loved was now acting out the title of a song by Kansas. He used to wonder why some people were so creeped out by the idea of cremation, or why they did that whole let's-go-to-the-funeral-home-and-look-at-grandma's-corpse thing. Now, he knew. Dust was nothing but dust. It meant that you needed to sweep the floor or that you'd just staked another member of the Evil Undead.
"I spoke to Greggo today," he said, startling himself with the sound of his own voice. He'd become lost in his thoughts again, not a safe thing to do this close to sunset. He reached up and nudged one of Willow's stones so that it didn't look like it was going to slide out of the pile. "He's doing pretty good, wishes you a happy birthday, says he thinks you'd like Vegas. Once things quiet down around here--assuming we actually continue our little winning streak and aren't all sucked into a hell dimension--I think I'll go out there and visit. Play the slots, lose my life savings at the craps tables, live the high life."
Xander ran his hand across the back of his neck. He'd been wanting to tell someone this next part ever since he got off the phone with Jesse's brother. Willow would have understood, but there was someone else who should be the first to know.
"It's hard to believe that you'd be twenty-two today, that it's been almost seven years since..." Since Xander had watched his best friend, no, his best friend's ~corpse~ vanish in a puff of dust. "Well, Greg says your folks finally put two and two together about the mortality rate in Sunnydale, and I don't think they're expecting you to show up on their doorstep out of the blue one day."
Still, they'd never know for sure. All they had was the absence of Jesse. There was no way he could ever tell them what really happened to their youngest son. Even if they did believe him, would they think, as he had for so long, that ~he~ had been the one to kill Jesse? Greg knew what had happened to his little brother, but Xander had carefully avoided telling him just who it was who'd staked that particular vamp.
"It...it sounds like they're finally..." Giving up. "...moving on. They're going to put up a little memorial for you in a cemetery in San Francisco. I guess you could think of it as kind of a vacation home or something. It feels weird to have your official board-certified grave someplace else, but I get why your folks would want to have you nearby. I guess you won't mind if I keep coming here to visit you and the others."
A shift in the light caught his attention. The sun was sinking below the tree line. Less than an hour until sunset, then. That would give him enough time to get back to Buffy's place before anyone started to worry.
During his short-lived tenure in Cub Scouts, he'd been both amazed by the fact that their den mother could tell what time it was by looking at the sun and confused by why anyone would want to. That's what watches were for, right?
Sometime during the past few years, he found he could tell how long until sunset almost by instinct.
He got up and walked off without saying farewell. There was no need to. He would be back. By the time the current apocalypse du jour was over, there would be others who would need to be remembered.
For the ones he knew, he would leave some sort of memento--a picture from his yearbook, or even just a slip of paper with a name.
He wasn't sure what to do about the ones who had died with no name and no one even seeming to know that they had lived, let alone died.
Maybe, somehow, this open grave would be enough.
Buffy had done her best to protect them when they were alive. Maybe her grave could give them some shelter even though they had no resting place to call their own.
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