Chapter 5: The Branding


It felt surreal.

Walking down the pearly white corridor with a stranger a couple of steps before her Buffy felt as though someone had pulled out her soul and deserted it in someone else. She felt alien; a stranger in her own body and the world was out of touch to her.

The white-tiled floors, the windows with the arching tops opening to the grey sky and the courtyard outside were unreal. The walls felt distant and yet too close as if they were tightening around her for each step she took.

The girl before her stopped dead in her track and Buffy was jerked out of her reverie, though she felt certain she was hallucinating when the girl turned to her, a broad smile stretching across her pale face.

'Hi there,' she said, extending her hand. Buffy shook it uncertainly. 'Famke is me.'

'Buffy,' her mouth replied automatically.

'So I heard. Can't stand that chap,' the girl explained, tilting her blonde head. 'Always listening or watching. Wouldn't do.'

'Mark?'

'Uh-huh. Heard you. Figured you weren't a sticker-hunter.'

'Sticker-hunter?'

'Teacher's pet,' the other explained curtly.

She was a little bit odd.

'No, I'm not exactly suck-up Buffy anymore, which kinda seems to twinge the Mark-guy.'

Famke nodded, her eyes fixing Buffy with an expectant stare. 'So what d'you wanna see?'

'What is there to see?'

'Not a whole lot,' Famke answered and Buffy smiled.

'Well,' she began briskly, 'I've already seen the library so we might as well take it from there.'


The Slayers' quarters were in the East Wing of the building and as they drew nearer the corridors became plainer, the surfaces painted to a simple white rather than the delicate, refined decorations of the Courtroom and the library.

Only the Council's slogan which Buffy had not noticed during her first walk with Mark still crowded the passages. 'Freedom in Protection' was written on doors, floors, window-sills and woven into carpets. Buffy despised it already.

'How many are there of you?' she asked, as they rounded a corner on their return to the library.

'Eight at the moment,' Famke replied.

'Eight slayers.' That was something she would have to adjust to. One Kendra had been more than enough. The moment the thought had formed she felt her head begin to throb painfully, and she bit down on her lower lip, using the pain to push the images that sprung to life aside. 'The undead fiends must have a hard time keeping up.' The other's pale face was expressionless. 'How long has it been for you?'

'Called four months ago.'

'Still a pretty new gig, huh?'

'I'm getting there,' Famke said evasively. 'A bit strange, though, cos all the others know each other. I'm the outsider in the group.'

Buffy felt a pang of sympathy. Did she know about that. 'Girls do that kinda stuff.'

'Yeah. Some of them have been here since they were seven.'

'You're kidding!'

'On my honour. But what about you? Sixteen, seventeen, right? Late to be called.'

Buffy fidgeted nervously with the edge of her top. 'I'm not really – or at least I wasn't...' She frowned. 'It's all a bit confusing.'

'Humour me.'

'I don't really remember, actually. Or I do, but apparently what I remember never really happened. So I'm pretty much at sea here.' She shot her companion a glance but apparently this did not strike Famke as odd; or if it did, she did not show it. Buffy got the impression she did not normally talk this much, and by the sound of her voice she was foreign too, which could not make it any easier for her.

'Have a task tonight,' Famke said unexpectedly. 'Could tag along. See the world.'

'Need back-up?' Buffy teased. They turned down yet another corridor.

'Not me,' came the dry reply. 'You have patrol tomorrow. Thought you should know your way home before charging into battle.'

Buffy pulled a face. 'Practical thinking. I'm still trying to develop that.' She paused before a door, the first she had seen, that did not bear the slogan. 'What's that?'

Famke shrugged. 'Restricted section. Only few of the Councillors are allowed to enter.'

Buffy frowned at the heavy wooden doors before her, the sense of unease stirring once more inside her. 'What's in there?'

'Don't know. Haven't checked.' Famke shifted her weight impatiently. 'You coming?'


The night was chilly; though there was no wind the icy air still climbed through her jacket to reach the skin underneath and Buffy shivered. They walked in silence; none of her five male companions had seen it as being in their best interest to chat to her, and she had gladly taken the chance to impose some sort of order on her muddled thoughts.

She was as yet unsure of what exactly she was walking into. Famke had told her of the weekly check-up that was obligatory for the City's Pets. Mark had told her nothing. Buffy assumed she was sent to keep a check on what exactly went on - to keep the vampires submerged.

During her time in Sunnydale, be it real or not, Buffy had learnt to deal with uncertainty, to respond to it with spontaneity and precision, so the ambiguity of the details concerning her task had not shaken her. What made her uneasy was rather the doubt of what to expect from the Pets.

Angel had been the only vampire with a soul she had ever known and all evidence pointed towards him having never existed. She felt lonely, bare, exposed as she walked along the quiet streets, the streetlamps flickering to occasional grainy life before dying once more. Yet she held her head high and in her eyes only her determination and confidence burned.

The streets were abandoned; the houses resting gloomily by the sides were all shrouded in darkness and the world was eerily silent. Mark had said there were millions living in the city, yet with the lack of any kind of human activity she had experienced Buffy was seriously beginning to doubt it.

There had been life in the street earlier in the day even though most of the people she had seen were striding hurriedly past the small shops on either side, looking neither left nor right but minding their own business and seemingly expecting others to do so too.

Marred and rusty cars had been parked before the Council building but in the City they were few; the odd, battered vehicle randomly abandoned in the middle of the street or resting sullenly beside a darkened building. A part of Buffy wondered why. From her point of view she was technically in the future, yet the most of what she saw hinting at a deteriorating society rather than the opposite.

There were screams, roaring, shouting, as they stepped through the door of the old factory into the main store-room. Immediately the sweet stench of burned flesh slammed against Buffy's face and it was all she could do to keep herself from retching.

At the left wall a grate was spewing a faint golden gleam across the rough floor where three armed men were struggling to hold down a young male vampire. It was thrashing violently under their firm grasp when a hand closed around its hair, brutally jerking its head to the side so its right cheek was exposed to the sky, while the burning coals hissed as another plucked a long iron-rod from the flames. It was then it finally dawned on Buffy what she was witnessing.

She whirled on her team leader in frenzy.

'You brand them? As-as though they're cattle or sheep?!'

He gave her a blank stare. 'They're animals,' he just replied. 'They don't feel it.'

On the ground the Pet cried out as the red hot branding iron made contact with the skin but as the soldiers retreated, it remained lying lifeless on the ground. Finally one of the men stepped forward and as the Council soldier dragged the vampire to its feet the glow from the fire flickered across its face, and Buffy saw in stark clarity the large, inflamed W pierced by a C that marred the entire right side of the creature's face.

She felt sick.

The face was turned and the demonic visage melted away, the golden glint in the eyes giving room for a softer, darker glow as they caught hers, and for a moment Buffy saw Angel there; the pain, the sadness, the depth of emotions she could never truly fathom piercing her to the soul.

With a determination she had thought herself incapable of evoking at that moment, Buffy forced her legs into a walk and doing her best to submerge the growing lump of ice in her stomach, she marched right up to the Brander who stared at her with unconcealed bemusement.

His surprise hardly lessened when she delivered a powerful slap to the side of his face. 'Bastards,' she spat in disgust. 'God, you are brave to dare attack him four to one, aren't you?'

The Brander's face instantly took on the same colour as his left cheek. 'Who is this?' he demanded of her team captain, pointing rudely at her.

'Vampire Slayer comma The,' Buffy snapped back. 'Look it up.'

He glowered at her.

'We're here to prevent any violent incidents,' the team captain hurriedly cut in.

'Good job,' the Brander sneered sarcastically, his palm rubbing absent-mindedly against his reddening cheek, but then he had to turn back to his task as another vampire was dragged through the door beside the fireplace. The squad leader grabbed Buffy by the shoulder.

'Do control yourself!' he snarled. 'That was not the kind of behaviour the Council expects from a Slayer and I shall have to report it to your Watcher!'

Buffy did not flinch. 'Feel free to do so.'

Glaring at her but apparently at a loss for a snappy retort, he turned away from her to focus his attention upon his squad who had followed the verbal battle with blatant curiosity.

'Block E37 had a Rogue incident half an hour ago and called for back-up. One of their guys will have to learn to write left-handed – courtesy of the Pet - so it's a destruction order. You know what the Council expects, so give it to them. Go.'

It was not before the eleventh branding of the evening that Buffy noticed that the wristbands the Pets wore were rather more than that. Being the Slayer she found herself enforced to stand by and watch as creature after creature was brought in, marked and hustled out once more. Some of them screamed and struggled, others were quiet and submissive, their heads held low. The soldiers treated them all the same.

The air was soon heavy with smoke and the stifling reek of seared flesh. Doing her best not to inhale too deeply, Buffy had debated with herself what would happen if she simply turned on her feet and walked away but had in the end come to the conclusion that that would be selfish. Just because she could not bear to watch the way the pets were treated and chose to walk away would not make the event stop. It would still go on whether she decided to watch or not. And since she had already interrupted proceedings four times when she found the soldiers became too rough with their charges, she had come to the conclusion that she would do the Pets the greatest service by staying and watching the branding proceed.

The Pets were all critically underfed, their skin abnormally pale and the shabby grey rags they wore hung loosely from their shoulders. Their general appearance coupled with the hideous burn on the right cheek ensured that nobody could ever mistake them for being human. And as Buffy stood in the corner of the smoke-filled room watching vampire after vampire being wrestled to the ground, she felt a slight pang of relief, of gladness, that Angel had never been part of this world; appreciation that he should never be reduced to something lower than an animal, be treated without respect as something without any right or voice.

She took solace in the relief that she should never see him branded and broken, with metal rings crafted through each of his wrists to form permanent, degrading handcuffs if need be. She had been too surprised to hit the Brander when she noticed the manacles that had been surgically crafted through each wrist, too shocked and appalled by what she saw to do anything but stare as the female Pet was dragged past her.


The doors clattered angrily after her as Buffy stalked into Mark's office. It was four in the morning and she had just returned from the branding to find her Watcher still awake, working ferociously with something he became exceedingly busy with brushing out of the way as she marched through the doors.

'It's inexcusable!' she announced angrily and he blinked at her.

'What?'

'The way you treat them – it's appalling and distasteful and inhumane. They are not slaves, and they are not unthinking imbeciles!'

Ever so slowly Mark pushed himself to his feet, his fists resting on his desk as he leant forward across the table's surface. 'The brandings, I assume?'

Buffy had paused before his desk, glaring furiously at him.

'Yes! It's pathetic! You're so damn terrified of your own world, so afraid of the society you have created yourself that you no longer know who is the enemy!'

'Ah. And you do, I assume?'

'Yes, Mr Perceptive, I do. The enemy is not the half-demons with souls who would gladly fight for your cause if you gave them the choice, but the hordes of vampires roaming the city whilst the Council is too busy repressing their own.'

'Talk like that will land you before the Committee.'

'Great,' Buffy said, neither knowing nor caring what the Committee was. 'At least someone will listen.'

Mark's voice was hardly above a hissing whisper as he went on. 'You have been back one day. You have had one assignment. You will not make such judgments again. The schedule for the week's patrolling has been issued and you will do your turn tomorrow as planned.'

'No,' Buffy said with false brightness, 'in fact I don't -'

'You will leave at five-thirty and be back before six in the morning,' Mark pressed on, unperturbed. 'A map with the area you are expected to cover has been brought to you room. You can leave.'

'You're an ass-hole.'

He slumped back in his chair. 'Sleep well.'

Fuming with rage Buffy spun on her feet and left the room, silently vowing to strangle Mark with his stupid map first thing in the morning.


I am so sorry it took me so long to update. The chapter just did not want to work. I promise to be out quicker next time, so look for the next chapter in a couple of days. And thanks sooo much for the reviews!