TITLE: Ashes/Ceniza

AUTHOR: Otsoko

SUMMARY: Xander is held prisoner in Angel's basement. He thinks.

RATING: NC-17

CONTENT: SLASH: Angel/Xander. Dark angst / implied violence and sex.

SPOILERS: None

FEEDBACK: you betcha!

DISTRIBUTION: any slash-friendly place that lets me know

Ashes/Ceniza
by Otsoko

Part 1. Nor does it even recognize me.

Soy, no soy. I am and I am not.
Vivo, no vivo. I live and I don't live.
Y entre tantas confusiones, And between so much confusion,
no sé donde I don't know where
he puesto mi alma I've put my soul.
Ni ella misma me conoce. Nor does it even recognize me.
Lope de Vega.


I wake up from a nightmare. Slowly I open my eyes, recognizing the room. It isn't mine. I gulp, realizing for the first time in my life, waking up from a nightmare is not a relief. I know I oughta be able to turn that into a jokey line, but my heart's not in it. In fact, my heart's not anywhere.

I sit up on the floor, and lean against the wall, pull my knees up to my chest, and hug them tightly to my torso. I put my head on my knees and close my eyes. I will not cry. I will not. That belongs to me. I will not give him that. That may be the only thing I have left that is mine, the only thing that he cannot touch.

I stare at the door, seized with the sure and certain knowledge that the door is locked. If I stand up and walk over and try to open it, he will see. And then he'll laugh at me … Again.

I stand. I walk over to the door, every muscle in my legs aching, sore, stretched, bruised, abused. I reach for the doorknob, and turn it and pull. Nothing. Locked. Tight. I know he is watching, laughing. He'll throw that in my face later. I could knock and scream to be let out, but that would just be giving him another joke.

I slowly let out a long, deep breath, moving back to my place against the wall. I have to work at walking, not dragging myself, but walking, like a man, as if I were a man. I'm huddled as far from the door as I can get, as far away from him as I can get. I stare at the door, half expecting him to enter, with a mocking laugh and that smirk. He doesn't. I pull my legs up to my chest again, and put my head down again.

Part of me knows I deserve this. I don't want to. I want to deserve something else, anything else. Part of me knew this would happen, sooner or later; Knew that someone would do this to me. I never had a clear idea who, certainly never dreamed it would be this cruel, this mean, this … inhuman. Hey, I grimace, I made a funny.

I don't laugh.

Everyone seems to recognize that I deserve this. I might as well admit they were right, all of them. Giles will scowl and ask snidely what I did to get myself into this; Will would shake her head and give me that look that says "Well you fucked up again." And Buffy, shit, she'd just beat me to death for even looking at him. Yeah, and Mum would just stare at me with vacant
eyes and try to figure out if this means that she can start drinking a bit earlier today. And Dad, well, maybe I'm safe there. Don't think he has any looks to give me I haven't seen a hundred times: All of which boil down to the same thing: not the son he asked for, not the son he wanted.

And this, well, it's proof positive, isn't it?

There's nothing for me to do but wait. He'll wait until he thinks I'm least expecting it, and return. He'll play with me, with my head, like he did last night. Or was it the night before? He'll use me, and convince himself that I enjoy it. And I'll respond just enough, despite myself, to let him believe that.

And he will take me in his arms, and kiss me, and make me want it, and give it to me, and I will writhe beneath him, and breathe heavily, and groan under his thrusts, and bite my lip till it bleeds. But I will not say his name. I will not.

If I am lucky, afterwards, he will grow tired of it, of me, and he will do the one thing that can get me out of this, the one thing that I've never had the courage to do, the one thing that needs doing. That's needed doing since I staked Jesse, despite my pretense that I was needed to help in the good fight. I know, I've always known, even as the rest have always known. I was more hinderance than help, but better a pleasant illusion than a cruel reality.

There are footsteps in the hall. A key in the lock. A hand turns the doorknob. I can't help it, I look up. I will meet his eyes as he enters. I will not blink. I will not cry. I will not speak. I will stare at him with all the hate in my heart. And if I am lucky, that will be enough for him to finish it … to finish me.



No somos nada. Nada de nada. Somos polvo, somos ceniza.
We're nothing. Nothing at all. We're dust, we're ashes.



PART 2: the darkness

(a little Basque poetry, because the Basques do angst well.)

Askatuko zaituen If for them to free you
zai bazaude you are waiting,
zaude lasai, you can relax.
zaude ziur You can be sure
askatuko zaituela that they'll eventually free you,
Kateak itsusiak baitira because chains look really ugly
hilotzaren gorputzetan. on a corpse.
M. Laboa


In the year 2000, and in the city of Our Lady of the Angels. in an almost empty basement . In a darkness that feels as deep and long as those those nights you can't sleep, and as painful as having to keep silent for so long.

Slowly I raise my head and look towards the door. I want to tell myself that last night was a dream, or more appropriately, a nightmare. One nightmare more. One nightmare too many. It wasn't. He will come back. He'll come back, bursting in without warning, throwing me face down on the bed, starting it all over again.

And I'll scream, and I'll plead, and I'll beg him, and my body will respond to him, and in the end I'll come, biting the pillow so as not to speak, so as not to say his name. And he'll kiss my neck as I come, in the middle of my orgasm, and the kiss will turn into a bite, like all his kisses. A deep and bloody bite, sucking from my life, my very soul, *emptying* me, taking my life-force, my desire, my will.

And after we've both fallen on the bed, I'll understand that he's no more than an animal, and it shouldn't be like that. But it is. And that there is nothing that I can say, that could work to stop him or stop it, he doesn't have a drop of pity or mercy in him, that his soul has lost any bit of humanity that he ever posessed.

I sit without moving, seated on the bed, feet on the floor, looking intently at the far wall. I wish I could see well enough to really see it, to be able to count how many bricks in each row, and how many rows in the wall. Anything to kill the time. To kill my thoughts.

I understand for the first time why people do serious drugs. To forget everything, to lose themselves in the dream: a fake dream, maybe, but in any case a dream, a happy dream. In this moment of clarity, if I had something, I know I would shoot up. With any luck, give myself an overdose, so that at least the last moments of my life could be perhaps the only totally happy moments in my shit life.

But there is nothing to shoot up. There's nothing. Neither to eat, nor to drink, nor to take, Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I am in an empty basement: as empty as my ripped-apart and useless heart.

I look again at the closed door. I blink, fighting back tears I don't have anymore. I don't have any left. I don't have anything left.

Nothing.

I throw myself on the bed, looking up. I close my eyes, but I don't sleep. I can't. I don't know if it's day or night. I don't want to sleep or be awake. I don't want anything. I breathe. It's all that I can do, all that I have left.

I decide to keep breathing. It's the first real decision I've made since having come to this basement, to my cage, to my true and well-deserved life.

I listen. I hear nothing. But he will come. He'll return. And start all over again. But the next time'll be different. He won't notice, because he never does. But it *will* be different. Because I've made a decision. Because I know he can beat me and hurt me and bite me and suck me and fuck me, but there still exisits a part of my soul he can never touch.

He can kill me, he can turn me, but he can't touch that corner of my soul. That little corner remains, and will always remain. It's untouchable, belonging to me, and only to me.

"It's *mine*," I say to the darkness.

==========================

Part 3. Epilogue

And after.

He's lying in the bed, spent, after having kissed me, and licked me and blown me and fucked me and bitten me and sucked me and fucked me again.

I mumble something under my breath.

"What?" he asks.

I raise my head and look at him. I blink. I say nothing.

"What did you say?" he asks again, more insistently.

I don’t want to repeat it. But I do. Not because *he* insists, rather because I want him to hear it, and maybe to understand what he's done to me. Maybe he'd know.

"I'm nothing."

He leans on his elbow, and looks at me with a certain intensity

"*We're* nothing" he responds, "We're dust".

I hesitate, startled, but then answer, completing the old saying: "We're ashes".

And for the first time in I don't know how many days, he smiles at me, but with an almost blank face. He shakes his head at me, slowly, sadly.

"Not that either", he tells me simply.

I blink and I see him as though for the first time.


=====================================

Notes.

The city of Our Lady of the Angels: el pueblo de Nuestra Señora de los Angeles. L.A.s original name in Spanish.

The epilogue is a translation nightmare. What you need to know is that there is a Spanish saying,
'No somos nada / somos polvo / somos ceniza' "We're nothing, we're dust, we're ashes", that friends repeat to each other when they are sharing moments of existential angst.