Connie, Connie, Connie. This promises to be fun.

SA, I liked that a lot, dollface. And I've not read any QaF US fiction at all, and only seen maybe half a dozen episodes (an odd experience, with the UK original constantly interposing itself in my brain). Nice take on Michael, though. Sweet. And I'd agree with Dana that this kind of indirect take on Brian is the only one I can imagine buying. Lindsey's the pretty blonde dyke, yeah? Are you planning on Justin for the next one, or a more peripheral character?

SA, are you doing the remix?

Yup. Still have a day or so.

Thanks for the comments, folks, and I'll probably go back and poke at it a bit. Ah, slash, the genre of difficult pronoun use.

I'll see if I can answer your questions later, okay?

LindsAy. LindsAy. Not LindsEy. Jeez. Sorry.

regards fingers disapprovingly.

Stop it, Evil Hand!

fresh, hot off the WordPad fic

Giles' guide bowed at the doorway. He bowed in return and, with a deep breath, drew the curtain aside. "Ethan, it's me."

On a futon on the far side of the room lay Ethan, facedown with a tiny woman mostly draped in a towel walking on his naked back. "Hello--oh, yes, love, right there--Rupert. This is Midori."

Giles bowed. "Konnichiwa, Midori-san."

Midori smiled brightly and bowed in return, still treading Ethan's spine. "Konnichiwa, uezama."

"This girl has the most amazing toes," Ethan said between gasps. "Would you like a turn?"

BTW, I'm pulling the bits of Japanese out of an online English-Japanese dictionary, so, please, any Japanese speakers, be kind.

Are you planning on Justin for the next one, or a more peripheral character?

Yup. Michael will always take care of Brian, Lindsay will never leave Brian, and Justin will always love Brian.

Or, you know, so they think in Season One.

Anne, here are the comments I promised you. First off? Love the title. Tomb of the Unknowns is lovely. I am so bad with titles.

Far too much of his life had been nothing but noise.

I commented on this line before, but I love it so much. It captures Xander's life. 'I like the quiet' is the one line he's spoken that I believe sums up his character, and you've used the concept here in a way that punches me in the stomach.

Then there was the noise of school, but most of the time that was nothing more than his own voice as he mouthed off for any one of the million reasons he had.

Oh, yes. Very true. But really only one reason - to defend himself. Not that he knows that.

The job was harder than he'd expected. He should have realized that working with stone wouldn't be the same as working with wood. Willow had to do some magical editing at one point when one of the Fs in 'Buffy' became an E by mistake. He'd been trying to see the letters as nothing more than lines, angles, and curves, so he wouldn't think about what the words and dates actually meant.

What a lovely thought - Xander carving the headstone (I had him making her coffin in my fic). And nice touch with the magical editing. I love the way Xander is concentrating on the task instead of thinking about the meaning.

"A lot," Anya, ever the literalist, added not even a second after Willow had finished. It was so absolutely perfect that Xander was caught between laughter and tears for nearly twenty minutes.

Beautiful. The entire passage about the words, actually. But I love this part. I'm a sucker for good Anya (which this is, even though it is such a wee bit) and imagine that Xander's laughter has frequently been mixed with tears.

He finally reached the clearing, and pushed all thoughts of Anya out of his mind. There was only room to deal with one pain at a time.

Ouch. But it fits in with what I said above.

As always, Xander checked to make sure that none of the stones were missing. Twenty-one stones. Twenty-one weeks. One hundred forty-seven days in the grave.
He wondered if anyone else had kept track of all of the days she was gone.

What a lovely little touch. Such a subtle way of bringing to mind Spike and Buffy's conversation after she was raised.

Today, however, things were a little different. Twenty-one had taken on a different meaning.

Yeah… That's sweet. Poor Jesse.

Rocks were one of those things you expected to find lying around handy when you needed one.

Stupid unreliable rocks. I had Willow carry one with her for this very reason.

More comments.

Slayketeers,

This is cute. I have not heard this before.

He'd been carrying the picture around ever since Buffy had told him about her encounter with their old classmate. A few strokes with an exacto knife, and Webs' picture had come cleanly out of his yearbook.
His yearbook had a lot of holes in it. He'd even dug up a second copy at a yard sale because he needed the backside of some of the pictures he'd cut out of the first one.

This is so sad. And also very fitting. It strikes me as a very Xander thing to do. Very secretive.

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.

How perfectly wonderful. You've written such a tribute to the characters' grief without doing anything splashy or melodramatic. It's simple and it's true. And very, very sad.

There were too many people in this town who only had an unmussed bed or an empty chair, and no explanations.

Missing person posters and leaving a light in the window. Uncertainty is the worst.

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.

Nice. Love the Kansas ref, though it took me a minute to figure out the song it ended up earworming me for hours.

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.

I read the first two episodes long before I saw them. I was disappointed to see that Xander didn't so much stake Jesse and just kind of hold the stake while someone else accidently pushed Jesse onto it. While I am certain that Xander has never forgiven himself for this, it would have set his character up as the person who could make hard choices. And this has nothing to do with your story, it just bugs me.

This is such a nice look at Xander. And I spend a lot of time studying him, so I know of what I speak.

Beginnings of a second Darla story: Working title is "Donna, Ombra".

---

The girl makes her way up from the river, walking north across the Ponte Vecchio towards the Piazza della Signoria.

It's busy, and loud, and no one seems to see her. At first glance, this seems peculiar; she's a very beautiful girl. She's all fine bones and sleek pale hair and the kind of sensuality that ought to stand out, even here. Yet she moves, unseen and unacknowledged as the moonlight itself, past the stalls on the bridge, past the African vendors with their Prada and Gucci knockoffs artistically arranged on thin sheets of plastic on the lungarno, through the crowds of tourists who gawk at the ancient bridge and the river otters swimming in the Arno.

There is no moonlight, not at the moment. It's at the dark phase, which suits the girl perfectly. She has begun her evening on the south side of the river, in the long shadows of the Piazza Santo Spirito. She's eaten there, and paused to wash her hands in the running water of one of the old lion's head fountains. The water is cold, and very clear. She cups her hands and scoops some into her mouth, rinsing her teeth, gargling, spitting out the residue.

Across the Ponte Vecchio, up the covered Piazza degli Uffizi, stared down upon by the marble heads of long-dead icons, out into the enormity of the Piazza della Signoria. She stops there for a moment, in front of the enormous statute of Neptune with its flaunting penis and well-carved rage, her tongue flicking out to catch the scents on the night air.

Perfume, sweat, hair product. Bats, wheeling high above the city, in and out of the tower of the Palazzo Vecchio. Cookery; everything from ribbolata to fresh gelato. A stale reek of grappa; someone had spilled a glass.

"Una sera bella."

The voice, from just behind her right shoulder, is hoarse and a bit too knowing. She turns her head. The man at her side is dusky, black-haired and black-eyed. He looks like an Etruscan effigy come to life, a golem, an animation. She lets her eyes imprint him, and decides she likes what she sees.

the rest of what I've got so far

"This girl has the most amazing toes," Ethan said between gasps. "Would you like a turn?"

"Not at the moment, thank you anyway."

Ethan studied him out of the corner of his eye, then waved a hand at the girl on his back. "Domo, Midori-chan. Tajitsu, jiyuu."

She climbed down with a smile and another bow. "Hai, Etan-sama, tajitsu." She went to the other side of the room, past the large free-standing bathtub, dropped her towel casually and pulled on a bright yellow kimono with printed peacocks and a pair of wooden clogs. With another bow and bright smile, she glided out.

Ethan sat up and studied Giles. "How bad is it?"

Giles stared at the wall behind Ethan, absently tracing the wood grain with his eyes. "There was a Turok-Han. It killed Annabelle."

"Oh, fuck." He looked his age for a moment. "Rupert, I am sorry."

"Yes, well, I think we knew that there was the possibility that something like this could happen--"

Sighing, Ethan got to his feet, took Giles' bundle and put it next to another next to the wall, then pushed Giles towards the tub. He tugged on the kimono. "Off."

"Excuse me?"

"Take it off or I do it for you. The bath's nice and hot, and you look like you need to relax."

Giles slowly began unknotting the sash. "If I relax I may fall asleep."

"I won't let you drown."

He remembered why he wanted Ethan with him during this mess, because here was someone he didn't have to be strong for. Even someone he could go so far as be weak with. Slowly he let the tension fall from his shoulders, along with the kimono. Ethan guided him to the stairs next to the tub, helped him up and into the water, then lowered himself into the hot water with a sigh.