Ms. H, read and replied. I'd love to read more when you have it.

It's late, and I have dreams of finishing this before the next new Buffy potentially wrecks all my plots. (Ethan and Giles headed to China, btw)

Despite Ethan's best efforts, Giles insisted on visiting the Chinese embassy for proper visas. A well-dressed bureaucrat looked over their forms.

"There should be no problem getting visas to Hong Kong," the man said. "How long do you expect to stay?"

"Not long," Giles said. "We're planning on going on to Shanghai. Can we get the necessary paperwork here?"

"Rupert," Ethan muttered urgently. "Not here."

The bureaucrat raised an eyebrow. "And what is your business in Shanghai?"

"Pleasure," Giles answered easily.

The bureaucrat only looked at them. "Pleasure."

Ethan sighed. "Actually, I had family in Shanghai during the war."

The suspicion in the man's eyes changed to mixed sympathy and discomfort. "Indeed."

"I haven't wanted to mention it here in Tokyo."

"No, I don't imagine you would want to."

Ethan proceeded to weave a tale of old friends of the family who had stayed in indifferent touch and wanting to see them before time erased all living memories of that difficult time. The bureaucrat efficiently helped them with the necessary papers, told them they could pick up their visas the next afternoon, and seemed grateful to have them out of his office.

On the street, Giles turned up the collar of his coat against the winter winds. The damp chill settled into all his old injuries, making him long for that bathhouse and hot water again. Beside him, Ethan buttoned up all the buttons on his Navy deck coat, then pulled a black woolen scarf out of a pocket to wrap around his ears.

"I hear it's lovely in Istanbul this time of year," Ethan said. "There couldn't be a potential Slayer there you need to collect?"

"Not anymore. She's dead."

"Oh. Sorry."

They started down the busy street towards their hotel, working their way carefully through the bustling crowd.

"Did you really have family in Shanghai?" Giles asked. "Or was that yet another patented Ethan Rayne tale made from whole cloth?"

"No, actually, I did have someone there. A third cousin several times removed, she was always held up as an example of what kind of person one would not want to be."

Giles blinked at him. "A sorceress, cheat, liar, and scoundrel? A role model for you?"

Ethan chuckled. "No, as far as I could ever find out, there were no magical tendencies in Cousin Hildegard in the slightest. Rather she was a young adventurer making her way in life on her wits and daring. If she'd been a man she'd have been lionized. She was last heard of working for the British Consulate in refugee matters. The family lost track of her when the Japanese sacked the city, though I always got the impression that no one tried very hard to find her." He glanced over and saw the look on Giles' face. "No, I'm not nursing fond hopes that we'll find her or word of her. My god, it's been nearly 70 years, now, she'd be in her 90s. I'd almost rather not know what happened to her," he added quietly.

"No, it's probably best."

The chilly afternoon was quickly darkening into cold evening, but the crowds did not diminish. Giles saw with some concern that Ethan had begun to shiver. He started to speak, then something in a nearby alley caught his eye.

Ethan took a few steps further before he noticed Giles wasn't at his side any longer. "What is it?"

Giles stared tensely into the gathering darkness of the narrow alleyway. "I'm--not sure. I thought I saw ..."

Ethan joined him and likewise studied the alley. "What?"

"I thought I saw one of those Bringers." He started forward, but Ethan grabbed his arm.

"If we go after it, we get a fight. If we stay with the crowd, we can do our jobs. I don't know about you, but I'd like to be able to feel my fingers if we get into a tussle."

Giles grimaced but turned to head down the street. "They're after us."

"You sound surprised. It just means we're doing our job correctly." He shoved his hands into his coat pockets. "I really have to get some gloves."

"I know how much you hate the cold," Giles said sympathetically. "Thank you for putting up with this."

Ethan shrugged. "Just because I'd rather be on the Cote d'Azur about now . . . " He grinned sidelong at Giles. "I know the most lovely clothing optional beach . . ."

"The odds of my wanting to patronize a nudist beach at this time of my life range from slim to nil." His look at Ethan was stern. "Neither of us is twenty anymore."

"True," Ethan sighed. "But do you remember that holiday when we all went to Majorca? Deirdre in that absolutely amazing purple two-piece suit?"

"Oh, yes. That. Positively conservative in this day and age, that swimsuit."

"It's good to be alive in the 21st Century."

Despite the remembrances of hedonisms past, Giles kept an eye on the street around them as they walked, wondering how far away were the creatures who meant them harm.

This time the hotel Ethan had chosen was large, Western, and luxurious. Giles had been mildly surprised to find Ethan had booked a suite with two bedrooms. Whatever new footing their relationship was on after London and the destruction of the Council, it obviously didn't extend to Ethan making presumptions. Giles had spent several minutes working out whether he was relieved or disappointed at the sleeping arrangements. Not that he wanted to attempt recapturing the decadent days of his youth, but when times got stressful he found he liked the idea of . . . company.

Still, a two-bedroom American-style suite meant two bathrooms, which meant blissful hot showers for two men cold to the bone. They had a surprisingly domestic evening in, with room service bringing up sashimi and saki, which they ate in front of the television as they laughed at one of those amazingly murderous Japanese game shows that encourage people to risk life and limb for pathetically banal prizes. They debated whether the Japanese were only mirroring Western culture or whether they'd perfected it in all its mindless consumerist frenzy

It was rather a shock when Ethan suddenly stopped in mid-commentary on Giles' ancestry and how his descent from a pair of baboons thrown out of the group for being too stupid not to know they couldn't mate with rocks had impaired his critical reasoning facilities, looked at the clock, and declared, "I'm going to bed." Giles had been composing a rebuttal based on the fact that anyone who had willingly worn gold lame pants, no matter how stylish they were in what hip Soho clubs, was hardly in a position to judge the validity of any statement which required intelligence. He watched Ethan retreat into the other bedroom, let the years fast forward in his mind to current reality, then wobbled off to his own bed.

• **

and so am I, wobbling off to bed

askye, that's good. Nice Anya.

when times got stressful he found he liked the idea of . . . company.

More! More! More!

connie, that's turning into something really rather wonderful.

Yes, what Am said, with bells on.

I do hope i can get this finished before they do something dreadful on Buffy. I'm very nervous about various people's survivability.

I do hope i can get this finished before they do something dreadful on Buffy.

I'll settle for 'soon'.

But I'm well behind with Buffy, and I fear I know what you mean. Watching ASH keep his hands in his pockets for another episode may drive me crazy.

(driveby, with messages)

Plei: Roz says she went and read "Closing Time" and that it's "absolutely lovely."

Fay: Roz was/is hoping to go to Harvest, but she's a bit huffy with the organisers; she offered to do a crit panel for them, and they haven't got back to her yet. But if she does go, can I hook you up?

(driveby)

But if she does go, can I hook you up?

Hell yes! Although if she's going to be there in a formal capacity I shall feel decidedly shy/stalkerlike.

Although I suppose my interest in Roz is vaguely stalkerlike anyway, in a she-seems-like-a-nice-lass-and-I-like-her-writing*-but-she-doesn't-know-me-from-Adam kind of way. Darn. See, pretty much nobody in my corporeal life has the fannish love. I mean, there's my formerly-non-fic-reading-friend, who's now been sucked into reading LotR RPS...but the ironic thing about that is that, although I'm wholly to blame for sending her to Calico's stories, I kind of balk at reading RPS still, and so although I share the fannish glee (and the LotR love), I don't really read in her fandom of choice.

Um.

So, yeah - I'm awash with the Anorakish love of BtVS and AtS, and brimming with enthusiasm for fanfiction as a genre/aesthetic/whatever, but my opportunities to wax lyrical and pretentious about it all in person are few and far between. I figured that Roz could happily wax fannish over Cabernet Sauvignon, for she seems both smart and funny, as well as big with the Jossverse love. Which is cool.

* incidentally, did you read Webs ? It's been in the back of my mind a lot lately.

(Fay, do you know that she has a LiveJournal?)