vilakins | Ficlet: Headstones

Written for the b7friday TV Tropes challenge, which was so much fun, I decided to do more random tropes, even though they might not fit into the B7 universe as well as Explosive Instrumentation. This one uses The Fun in Funeral trope. 420 words, set PGP.

Headstones

A lot of people ask me this question. Thing is, you need a bit of background.

After The Thing in the Cellar which turned into Dorian's friend after it died, poor bugger, the friend I mean, Avon found a spade and made us go outside and bury him. I suppose it made up for not being able to do the same for Cally, except that when we put a stone over him, Avon carved the words "He died for his friend" into it with his laser which he thought was very funny. I might have too, but for the crazy way Avon laughed, like when the old Lib blew up. Sent a chill right down my spine, that did, and I wondered what he'd have put on mine.

Then not long after that, poor Doctor Plaxton was fried making the last connection on the stardrive she'd just installed. Look, I understand why Avon did it because if he'd waited before firing the thing up, we'd have been, but there wasn't any call for that "Who?" afterwards when we mentioned her. Cold bastard.

So we were all feeling a bit down after that and thoughts of mortality were pressing a bit on our minds as they say, especially after Soolin said something about Avon needing to be buried at a crossroads with a silver stake through his heart (if he had one) so I tried to turn it into a joke.

"When they dig me under," I said, "I'd like the headstone to say "VILA RESTAL, best thief in the galaxy."

"You wish," said Tarrant. "You'd be lucky if it said 'Mostly harmless'."

Wasn't sure really whether the 'mostly' was a compliment or not, but I said he'd have "DEL TARRANT - the memory of his teeth lives on."

That made them laugh and we settled on "DAYNA MELLANBY - extinct like most of her prey" and "SOOLIN - missed, but she never did", which pleased her, actually.

You might think I've got off the topic a bit, but I haven't. We did one for Avon too, you see.

So when we buried him after the mess on GP, Blake, who was up and about again (I always wore an armoured vest too after that), asked what sort of epitaph we wanted, and we all said the same thing. He was a bit taken aback, but there were more of us than him (though that was a close-run thing considering his size) so we compromised. So that's why it says:

KERR AVON
Who?