6.1.15 - Hello! Thanks for reading The Indelible Mark. I can't promise regular updates, but I'm really glad you're here. I promise to make this story everything it can be and more. You're all awesome. I look forward to hearing from you.
Peace,
-Rex
Prologue
June 13 - Sunnydale, California
Buffy Summers had always admired the freedom and bold autonomy of adults. She had always longed to be the master of her own apartment, her own bank account, slave to no curfew but her own, to have the luxury to go where she wanted, and do what she willed, with full control of her own trajectory. Independence had forever been a goal just slightly out of reach. Even in college, her summer jobs had paid paltry wages and she had been forced to rely on her parents to prop up her shaky, student finances. It had been, in a word, humiliating. All she had ever wanted was to be self reliant, to pay her own bills and take pride in it. Four years in school had passed quickly, however, and, now that she was standing at that cliff peering over, toes gripping the edge, all she wanted was time.
It was graduation day on a hot June morning in Sunnydale, California. Buffy stood in line with the rest of her classmates, waiting for her name to be called. She had been chewing on her lip for the better part of an hour, holding whispered conversations intermittently with the girls behind her, and she had worn off all of the expensive lip gloss that she had purchased for the occasion. The dark, polyester robe was sticking to her neck and shoulders, and no amount of furtive readjusting had made her standard-issue ceremonial gown more comfortable. Out in the audience, the parents and guests had long since converted the programs into makeshift fans, and the stands rippled with flashes of white as hundreds of members fanned themselves simultaneously. Beads of sweat trickled down her back into the waistband of her floral-print dress, and the blonde tresses that she had spent an hour curling were plastered to her forehead beneath the tight, square cap. Even her mascara was getting sticky, reminding her, yet again, that she had decided not to get the waterproof brand. She brushed the tassel out of her face for the 11th time that hour, shuffling forward toward the stage. Not long now, only a few more names to go. She took a deep breath to calm her fluttering nerves, wiggling her toes in her black, heeled sandals to restore some circulation to the area. She hadn't survived four years of growing pains just to get up on stage and trip in front of a thousand people.
The line continued to move. Buffy approached the makeshift stage, erected in the university's largest courtyard, surrounded by its oldest buildings. Her heart thumped wildly. This was it. She tried not to clench her teeth as the boy in front of her was called.
"Daniel Martin Sullivan!"
Buffy stepped up and handed her card to the reader, an elderly woman in a grey business suit who was waiting for her at the podium. Ahead of her, Daniel tromped across the creaky stage, pausing to shake the hand of the Dean. A woman in full academic dress, positioned discreetly behind the podium, tapped her elbow and whispered in her ear.
"Remember to turn and smile for the photographer after you shake Dr. Arrevalo's hand."
Buffy swallowed. She couldn't even nod. The reader turned to her and smiled.
"Buffy Anne Summers!"
Her heart leapt into her throat. A loud cheer erupted from a middle row on the left side, and she could hear her relatives clear as day, chanting her name. She didn't even mind that Dawn had brought an air horn. Her face cracked open into a brilliant smile, and she mounted the stairs like an Oscar winner on the red carpet, legs barely wobbling in her precarious choice of heels. She shook hands with the Dean, and accepted her degree from the President, remembering at the very last minute to turn and smile for the photographer below the stage. The cheers started up once again as she descended the stairs on the other side. Her heart was still racing, but her nerves waned as a tidal wave of relief washed over her. No more midterms or finals ever again. No more stern professors or papers or lectures. It should have been a sense of hard-earned victory flooding her tear ducts, but her smile was wistful as she filed along with the rest of her classmates toward their seats.
She didn't see what happened next, she only heard the change in pitch as an unnatural silence fell over the crowd. Someone was shouting in the stands. The voice was harsh and loud, slicing through the joyful exuberance of families cheering on their loved ones. Buffy turned and frowned as her gaze landed on a man, tall and lanky with bleached hair, pale skin, and a black, leather trenchcoat, standing over everyone in the middle of the courtyard, his arm raised toward the stage. He looked comically out of place.
The professor at the podium stopped reading mid-card, and a confused muttering swelled up from the crowd as all eyes turned toward the man in the center aisle. Out of the corner of her eye Buffy noticed figures in navy blue hurrying toward the source of the disturbance, hired security with radios and dark sunglasses. Her feet slowed as she squinted through the sun, struggling to catch a better view of the commotion.
"What is he saying?" she wondered, addressing no one in particular.
Three shots rang out in crisp succession, and the stunned silence turned to panicked screams as the president and the dean crumpled onto the stage floor. The crowd roared, as everywhere, all at once, people scrambled to their feet, grabbing their loved ones, attempting to flee the shooter. More gunfire rang out, but she could no longer see the man with the blonde hair over the heads of frantic spectators. She was rooted to the spot, eyes wide, mouth agape.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck! Buffy, c'mon!"
It was Daniel Sullivan, the guy ahead of her, grabbing her roughly by the arm, dragging her away. She didn't understand. What was going on? Why was this happening? Where was her family?
Her family…!
"DAWN!" She screamed at the top of her lungs as Daniel caged her in his arms. "DAWN!"
People were sprinting in all directions, stumbling out of the stands, plowing through chairs and decorations, pushing and shoving, tripping over each other in a chaotic stampede as they herded fled the area. It was a nightmare, a cacophony of shrieks and indiscernible yelling, hoards of terrified people everywhere moving in a great wave away from the stage. And somewhere in the background, more gunshots rang out.
"Shit! Buffy, holy shit! We have to go!"
He yanked on her arm, determined to save her, but she was still frantically scanning passing faces for her family members, only vaguely aware that she was screaming at the top of her lungs as she slowly, but surely, lost the tug-of-war. They were roughly knocked about and thoroughly bruised by the time Daniel had successfully dragged her to the edge of the square. It was, unfortunately, as far as they got before a large woman in a black dress collided with Buffy, knocking the blue graduation cap clean off her head. The heel of her shoe snapped and she fell to the ground, twisting her leg awkwardly to one side as she landed hard on her ankle. Daniel dropped to the deck and wrapped himself around her like a human shield. The pain came on hard and fast, shooting up her spine. She groaned and shuddered.
"Shit, can you stand?" Daniel turned his body into the oncoming mob, absorbing blows from shoes and kneecaps as she struggled to find her breath.
"My ankle…" Her chest heaved. "I think it's broken!"
He reached down to touch it, probing gingerly with broad fingers.
Expletives erupted from Buffy's mouth as he encountered a sensitive spot. "Shit, motherfucking bitch!"
He winced, brown eyes pained, and withdrew his hand.
"Fuck, it hurts!" Buffy moaned.
"Yeah, it's...it's not good."
She reached up and gripped the front of his robes, whimpering pitifully.
"Sorry." Daniel tensed as he absorbed a glancing blow from a stumbling man in a three-piece suit. "We can't stay here," he said, voice gruff and low. "I'm gonna try and carry you, you're not that-"
His words were interrupted by a deafening shout from the square behind them.
"WHERE IS THE SLAYER?!"
A terrifying, blood-curdling voice screeched out on the PA system and a hush fell over the frenzied crowd. Buffy looked up in time to see the pale face of the blonde man, standing victoriously on an overturned podium in the center of the stage, microphone in hand. He had ripped it clean out of its fixture.
"What's he talking about?" Buffy asked.
Daniel's jaw hung open, dumbstruck, eyes nearly bulging out of his head as he took in the scene onstage. There were more of them. Large men, clad in black coats and balaclavas, clambering over bodies and discarded chairs as they emerged from the wreckage. It wasn't a rogue gunman, Buffy realized, it was a full scale attack.
"WHERE ARE YOU, LITTLE SLAYER? YOU AREN'T REALLY TRYING TO HIDE FROM ME, ARE YOU? LOOK AT ALL THESE SCARED HUMANS! ARE YOU REALLY GOING TO LET THEM DIE LIKE THIS?" The man turned about around wildly, throwing his arms open wide as he addressed the terrified crowd. "COME OUT, COME OUT WHEREVER YOU ARE, SLAYER!"
"He- he has a British accent," she murmured, even more perplexed.
"This is insane," Daniel said, eyes wide. "This guy is out of his mind. We're getting the fuck out of here!"
In a single, swift movement, he looped one burly arm under Buffy's thighs and another around her back. He hoisted her up and hugged her against his chest, wobbling for a moment until he was steady on his feet.
"Hold on tight!"
Waves of pain rippled up outward from her injured ankle, but Daniel turned a deaf ear to her cries of agony.
"You can do if, Buff! Hang on!"
And she was hanging on. She was hanging on for dear life. With a fractured ankle there was no way she could escape on her own. Daniel immediately lumbered forward, and as he turned away from the stage, she caught sight of the blonde man one last time, arms outstretched, directing his men toward the remaining stragglers like a conductor in front of a symphony.
Buffy shuddered and clung tighter to her classmate's neck.
"FIND HER!" The blonde attacker roared. "BRING HER TO ME!"
He threw down the microphone amid the rubble with an ear-piercing screech and leapt off the overturned podium. He landed like a cat, crouching low in a pair of tight, leather pants, whipping out what appeared to be new guns from a holster beneath his trenchcoat. Something dark flickered across his features, something twisted and gruesome, and she could have sworn she saw a small pair of horns emerging from his head. She screamed, and her nerves finally got the better of her. She pressed her face into Daniel's chest as he staggered around the corner of the library building. Neither of them said another word, and all Buffy heard from that point on were the sounds of panic and gunfire as her classmate bore her swiftly toward a makeshift barricade of emergency vehicles in the parking lot.
/ / /
Daniel drove her to the hospital because the ambulances were already taken, and he stayed until her father arrived, breathless, sweating bullets in his expensive suit. By then Buffy was going into shock, and lay quivering on her cot, flinching violently whenever she was touched. She saw nothing of discernable meaning, could not linger on faces, only bright lights and stark colors, and the disjointed sound of her father speaking frantically into his cell phone, urging someone to go somewhere, or come somewhere. Buffy tugged on her hair and felt something warm ooze over her fingers.
"She hit her head," the nurse was saying.
"-can't rule out a concussion."
"Traumatic experience."
They restrained her with strong arms, and changed her into a shapeless hospital gown. An IV was inserted into her wrist. She didn't see her mother arrive, but she heard her parents fighting, and Dawn crying softly beside her, holding tightly onto Buffy's hand. The nurse asked her questions, but she couldn't answer because her teeth were chattering. She pointed at her ankle, and they assessed the break, and sometime later, maybe hours, they were preparing to send her to surgery. The room was getting fuzzy, their voices were growing distant.
And then, all at once her vision cleared.
Her frantic heart slowed. The doctors and nurses around her seemed distant, like bright, colored shadows, but when she perceived a great, solemn figure standing at the end of her bed, he appeared more vividly real than even her own hands. He was three or four heads taller than a man, stripped to the waist, his skin ashen and charred. He bore great, sweeping wings of dirty feathers from bony shoulders, fluttering and shivering from some ethereal breeze. His face was hollowed, handsome, unearthly. His eyes were bluer than any she had ever seen, and they shimmered in his dark features like stars in the night sky. They drew her in until the voices around her, the alarms beeping had all but faded away, and when he opened his mouth to speak to her, she was enchanted by his gentle, lilting tone.
"Behold! The ancient tradition that the world will be consumed in fire at the end of six thousand years is no longer true, as I have heard from Hell," he said, bending over the bed to examine her.
She licked dry lips.
"Buffy Summers," he hailed, "shining beacon of your people. Long have I waited to reveal myself to you."
"Who...are you?" she whispered, voice wavering.
"Do not be afraid. I am not one who is sent, but one who comes freely."
"W-wh-wh…" Buffy swallowed, and forced her chattering teeth to still. "W-why are you here?"
His blue eyes seemed depthless as they studied her. "To give that which only I can give." He paused. "Alas, time is short, and I have only enough time to offer you this advice." He seemed to take a breath, drawing himself up to his full height before continuing. "It has been said that the mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven. I tell you, there are plans set in motion that will bring hardship to you and to all your people, and for their sake, you must carry with you a light into the darkness. Do not face the lords of hell without it, lest your mind be corrupted by hatred and despair."
He paused, and Buffy was amazed to hear how captivating his speech was, how beautiful his quiet voice was. She ached to hear the sound once he had fallen silent again.
"Please," she begged, "say more."
"There isn't time," he replied, sadly.
"When will I see you again?"
"My debt is great. I will return to you, little champion, when you need me. I am watching."
The beautiful, burned creature then stretched his great length over Buffy's bed, and with blackened fingertips, tenderly drew her eyelids closed. She fell into a dark, enveloping sleep. And when she awoke, her foot and calf were set in a cast, and her memory of him was shrouded in the haze of dreams.
A/N: So, that bit about making a hell of heaven and a heaven of hell? That's a Milton quote, in case you were wondering.