Ofrenda

A/N: I was always curious about what happened to Billy as he departs the main story. I guess it's kind of good he decided to sit down and tell me. ^_^ I hope you enjoy this one. ~D

The afternoon heat kept most of the people out of the cemetery, even on a day like that one. The air was warm, even though the fall was turning towards winter in that part of New Mexico, but the ground was still like walking on an oven. The heat had baked itself into the packed earth and not even the grass that tried to grow - scorched out and dry because of a city-wide movement towards water conservation - or whatever covered a person's feet could shield them from the sensation of it burning through callous to heat straight into joints and bones. Old people liked the southwest for that, but died when they didn't get hydrated enough. It wasn't beyond Billy to laugh at the irony of it.

Billy didn't know if it was morbid curiosity that took him there… or if, like with Canada, he knew he wouldn't be in the States for a while and it was something he just wanted to see.

The family had plots, and while Billy doubted his father approved, he knew his mother would have put up a stone. There had been a long, silent argument with the Rebecca in his head over this particular course of action. She was adamantly in support of him staying hidden and free, and this, to her, sounded like a big, giant trap.

I didn't think you were actually this stupid, Billy. You always seemed so smart, before.

"I am smart," he muttered under his breath, "that's why no one's going to catch me at it."

He waited, leaning against a tree, staring blindly at one of the stones that was a few years old. Someone else might consider it to be disrespectful, fake mourning at a stone that he knew nothing about, but Billy apologized silently to the person's memory. He knelt, as he glanced quietly around the cemetery, and cleaned the dirt from the stone. No one had been to it in a while, he figured.

Do you know how many kinds of wrong this is?

It was a girl's stone.

What's next, are you going to sing to it? Or is this a grave robbing expedition?

"Don't be mad I beat you at piano," he chuckled slightly. That had to be a joke, because Rebecca, of all people, would know how little he cared for the unknown dead. There was a big problem with them. They tended to try to hug him. And then they went all the way for third base.

Billy shivered. He didn't fancy that sort of interaction with the undead, so he tended to keep a wide birth of the dead as well. This was… an exception.

Ellen Mason

1974-1997

Nah, it wasn't anyone he knew. Small town life had its limits, and he'd not been big on spending time in town when he did live here. Even if the timing and the place were close to where he would have been at those ages… just because of that there was no reason to think he would have known this girl with her forgotten tombstone.

Still, he cleaned it carefully.

Oh-ho, does the heartbreaker have a conscious after all?

The jeans he had on were so well worn in that he didn't sweat from the heat he could feel radiating up from the ground as he neared it. There was no real breeze, down that low. Billy didn't like the stillness. People noticed things more when it was still. People other than him noticed things when the world was quiet and patient like that.

It was ok.

Billy knew how to wait out the wind.

He was also getting pretty good at acting. He let his fingers linger on the stone, staring at the way that it sat against the dry ground it was pressed into. The grass was mostly dead, but some of it threatened on being green, even without the winter rains to nourish it. Billy pulled a weed or two away from Ellen's tombstone, satisfied, finally, that the corner of the cemetery he was after checking next was empty of people.

Rising, he discretely checked to be sure that the .45 magnum he still carried was accessible, just in case. He did it by shifting his foot slightly as he lowered his left foot to the ground. It wasn't snagged on anything, and he had the corner of that pantleg tucked up against the edge of his boot, just in case.

There were more trees on that corner, which he didn't like, but if he was going to be thorough about it, he'd need to check.

Billy hated how thorough he was, at times like that. When he could just get going, but instead he had to be sure before he could be gone.

It was as he was checking the last of the rows nearest the largest of the trees that he saw the difference on one of the pedestals.

He knew before he got around to the front of it that it would be his.

The bottle of tequila was a giveaway. Most people, even the ones who had decorated graves early, bought the cheap stuff. His mother had a policy on it. If one was going to drink tequila, make the worm jealous.

There were three cempasúchitl twined around the bottle of tequila, a neatly wrapped loaf of pan de muerto, and what looked to be an In'N'Out burger.

Billy tried, hard, not to laugh at that. It was only funny because he was alive and not dead.

Stopping in front of the stone that had his given name on it, Billy stared down at the blanket he hadn't let out of his sight until he had given it to his sister Chelo. It was wrapped, neatly, around a pillow.

The only thing missing was the skull.

Obviously…

Noise against the dry grass alerted him, and Billy ducked, snatching the magnum from his boot as he skipped back into the shade of the trees beyond his grave.

He lifted it at the source of the noise, pointing it at a person who had shied back against the tree behind where he'd been standing. Narrowing his eyes, Billy called out, "Come out where I can see you," in a low voice.

The tone was no-nonsense.

Who the hell would be lurking at his grave? What kind of sick fuck expected someone who wasn't dead to visit their own tombstone?

Ok, that wasn't exactly fair. He was the sick fuck visiting his own grave, and he already knew the people that had forced the situation on him were far sicker fucks than he would be even if he started cutting up puppies.

The slender frame of a woman pushed away from the tree, and Billy recognized the outline before he looked past aiming at her to recognize her face. His mother's silhouette was one he didn't think he would ever forget. He had seen it so often against the sunset sky when she called him in. It was more memorable to him than her lightly salted black hair.

Judith Coen stared at her son with tears in her eyes, and Billy was ashamed of himself. Ashamed for so many reasons. Ashamed because he'd made his mother cry, just like everyone had told him he always would… ashamed because his first reaction wasn't to run to her… ashamed because he had to force himself to lower the gun trained on her… ashamed because she might not even recognize him the way he was dressed… the sunglasses and the baseball cap…

"Guillo," she breathed.

He was stupid. He'd known that for years. This pounded the last nail firmly into place in the coffin of his stupidity.

It was his mother. Of course she recognized him.

The gun lowered before he even realized he was doing it.

Judith wasn't stupid, though, she stayed still, standing there, staring at her son, tears spilling from her eyes. Billy hastened to put the gun away, working at getting that final nail out of the coffin lid. He'd probably spend the rest of his life trying to crawl out of that particular grave.

Still she didn't approach.

He crossed to her instead, pulling his mother into a hug.