Fic: Shanshu 27 - We Are the Hollow Men

[dragonyphoenix]

Title: We Are the Hollow Men
Fandom: BtVS
Prompt: 477 - ascetic
Rating: PG
Summary: Another chapter for Shanshu
Word Count: 1013
Note: Written out of order. I decided I needed a scene earlier on, when Will and Willow are in the cell.

Will had moved the jug of water to the center of the cell. The walls were dank, oozing with who the hell knew what, and he didn't want anything contaminating their water. One thing, among many, that he couldn't get used to: no matter how much he drank, the jug remained full. Except he wasn't letting himself think about that. He didn't believe in magic – no matter what the red-head, Willow, said – but he couldn't see how the trick was being played. Perhaps they'd drugged him. Perhaps the whole situation was an elaborate hallucination. It felt real though. Sitting, shackled to the wall for days on end was too dull to be some kind of a vision.

Two bowls appeared next to the jug. Will wasn't sure how often they were being fed, but if it was three meals a day then Willow had been dumped into the cell with him just over a day ago. Her eyes were closed but she must have been awake. As soon as the bowls appeared, she spoke. “Please tell me it's not more mush. I'm sick of mush. I've had Lagosta Rosada Grelhada at Térèze in Rio. I've sipped at two-hundred year old whiskey while gazing at the stars from inside a dolmen circle near Carrowmore. I've danced 'till dawn at Burning Man. This ascetic life is not my style.”

“Asceticism isn't a style. It's a spiritual calling.”

She still hadn't opened her eyes. “So what's this then?”

“Torture.”

With that, she looked at him. “No. Trust me. This really, really isn't torture.” Willow glanced down at the mush before turning her head away. “It is bad enough though.”

He didn't like the mush any more than she did, but that was no reason to give up. “You have to eat.”

“Why?”

“To keep your strength up. In case we get a chance to escape.”

“You sound pretty confident we'll get out of here.”

He didn't try to hide his sarcasm. “I live in hope.”

“What makes you think we have reason to be hopeful?”

“I was found by the Sunnydale crater. I had nothing, not even my memories. If I hadn't been carrying a wallet, I wouldn't have even had a name. Charlie, part of the ER team that found me, took me in and gave me a place to stay, only it wasn't just someplace I could hang my hat. It was a home. Out of the ashes of that crater, I found a home, friends, a family, a lover.” He paused a moment. “Even if it didn't last. But what I mean to say is this: my life is full. So whatever crater you're in, once we're out of this mess, you can climb on out too.”

“You don't remember how bad it can get. You don't know what low is.”

Will gestured to the cell that contained them and the shackles chaining him to the wall. “What makes you think your life is worse than mine?”

“I lost my baby.”

Oh, he just had to go and put his foot in it, didn't he? “You lost a daughter?”

She looked as if he'd shocked her. Should he have kept quiet? “No, Tara, my lover.”

Who called her lover 'baby'?

“The most beautiful girl in the world,” Willow continued. “Dead. A stray bullet. And then Kennedy came along, but she came too soon and pushed too hard. I could have loved her – I think I could have loved her – but it was too soon. I was still grieving for Tara, and so I cheated on Kennedy and lost her too. Now I just jump. Place-to-place. Lover-to-lover. Bed-to-bed.”

No wonder she sounded so dead. She didn't have a life. She was merely running away. “That sounds … hollow.”

“What do you mean, hollow?” She sounded almost curious.

“As in Eliot's The Hollow Men.” He recited the first stanza:

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

“Ah, empty. Yes.”

“You have friends. That Alex guy. Why don't you go to them?”

She gestured to the cell.

“Why didn't you then? Before you were imprisoned.”

He thought she might say she'd always been imprisoned, trapped in a cage of her own making, but she surprised him with honesty. “I don't like them to see me like this. No, I mean … yeah, that is what I meant.”

He could see that it had taken courage for her to admit she'd been hiding from her friends. “But you don't just give up. Sometimes you have to fight for your life.”

“There's nothing I want to fight for.”

“Tell me about her,” he said. “About Tara.”

“She's dead.”

“How'd you meet?”

She didn't want to talk but he kept at her. It wasn't as if he had anything better to do. “ … and then her Dad came and told her she had to go back with him because it was her birthday and he'd told her all her life that she was a demon and she'd start hurting people so she had to go home where she could be controlled.”

“She was a demon?” Not that he believed in demons, or he probably didn't believe in demons, but Willow did seem to.

“No!” Talking about Tara had certainly revived Willow. “No. Her father had told her she was a demon, but she wasn't. He was just trying to control her, to beat her down.”

“Did she go back with him?”

“No, we stood up for her. We protected her, and he couldn't take her away.

He wanted to say she was down but you helped her out, but he figured Willow was already there. No need to hammer home the obvious. “You saved her.”

His words took Willow over the edge. She started crying and herself into his arms. “Shhh,” he said, patting at her back. “Let it out. You've got to let it out.”