Willow took a deep breath in preparation to speak, glancing again at her girlfriend, who nodded firmly, her mouth set in a firm line of determination. A part of Willow wanted to spare her friend the hard truth, but Tara was unyielding. Whether she wanted to or not, Buffy needed to know the truth about her husband and the depravities he was responsible for unleashing.

But Buffy *did* want to know.

“Wow,” Willow said, her voice a hushed whisper as she looked back toward Buffy, her eyes focused on the arm of the sofa rather than on her friend’s questioning – and increasingly fearful – eyes. “I – I’m not really sure where to begin.”

“How did Giles get Julian?” Buffy asked after a moment’s pause, trying to give her friend an easy starting point.

“He goes to the auctions every now and then – just to keep aware of the way things are handled there. Or – or if he’s getting discouraged. For – for inspiration. To remind him what he’s fighting for,” Willow replied, her voice soft and hesitant. “He went there a few months ago, and – and Julian was up for sale. Straight out of the training center.” She paused, searching for words.

“He was completely broken,” Tara supplied, in the same hushed tone her lover had used. They were all being quiet out of consideration for the sleeping vampire in Buffy’s arms, but the low tones in the stillness of the room lent a heavy, sober feeling to the scene. Buffy found herself utterly entranced, caught up in the story that had barely begun – yet terrified to hear more.

“Broken?” she whispered, swallowing hard, asking for clarification that she was not really sure she wanted.

“He wouldn’t speak – wouldn’t even look at anyone. Giles found out later,” Tara went on, a dark note creeping into her voice, “that it was because he was *trained* not to. They punish them – bad – for speaking without being spoken to, for meeting the eyes of a human – for – for any sign whatsoever that they have any confidence left at all.”

Buffy’s eyes widened in horror. “For – for talking?”

She glanced down at Spike, a sick feeling settling in her stomach. The thought of Spike being tortured and abused for something as simple as talking was something that she did not want to imagine. She remembered the cocky, arrogant person he had been before all this, and thought with a sinking feeling that he would have been punished often if he had ever been in the hands of the slave trainers. But, she thought hopefully, he had spoken rather freely to her, right from the start, so maybe he had not been put through the training program.

Or maybe they had just failed to break him completely.

Willow went on quietly, “He was – he was limping. He’d been hurt, and was having trouble walking, and he fell – right in front of Giles. The soldier who was leading him was very cruel. He just yanked him up and started beating on him for getting in Giles’ way.”

“But he was hurt!” Buffy was indignant. “He couldn’t help it!”

Tara nodded slowly, then shook her head. “Riley’s men don’t care. The men he’s picked out are cruel, sadistic monsters who get off on causing pain and dominating others. If this was fifty years ago, they’d be Nazis.”

Buffy was silent, sobered by the comparison. She knew that there were many slave owners – Riley included – who treated their vampires very cruelly, but she had never thought of it as being anywhere near the level of the Holocaust and Nazi Germany.

“Well,” Tara went on with a sad, affectionate little smile of memory. “At that point Giles couldn’t stand to leave him there. He offered to pay double the going rate for Julian, then and there, if they would not even put him up for auction, and just sell him to him right then. And – since nothing is more important than the almighty dollar…” Her voice held obvious contempt for the slave traffickers who were becoming rich off the suffering of the slaves. “…of course they agreed.”

“Well, after that,” Willow took up the story. “Giles started working with him right away, trying to convince him that he was safe, that he wasn’t going to be hurt anymore. But it took him a long time to believe it.”

“I think he sometimes still *doesn’t* believe it,” Tara inserted, her eyes serious and thoughtful. “He was scared to death for the longest time that it was all an elaborate trick, that Giles was just trying to get him to break the rules so that he could punish him. But finally, Giles was able to get him to trust him enough to talk to him about what happened to him.”

“And that’s when everything came out,” Tara added, her eyes troubled as they met Buffy’s. “It was hard for him to talk about it at all, harder even than you would think, because they threaten them over and over during their training, that if they talk about the specifics of what was done to them, they’ll be taken back there and punished for telling.”

Buffy frowned. “Why? I mean, if the law says humans can do whatever they want with vampires, what difference does it make if people know what they’re doing to them?”

“Because *most* people wouldn’t *want* to do the things that Riley’s men do to them, Buffy.” Tara’s voice held a warning, telling the Slayer that the “things” Tara was talking about were much worse than she expected. She braced herself for the truth as Tara went on, “Buffy, we’re talking about some sick, disgusting things that no human being who’s not an absolute sociopath would ever want to do to someone else.”

“It’s like I was saying, Buffy,” Willow broke in softly. “About giving people a way to give in to their baser impulses. If someone has some dark, twisted fantasy that they can’t act out with their partner, because, hello -- *jail*…” She shrugged before going on, “No big deal. They can just buy a slave to do it with – they get their kicks, and…” she made finger quotes around the rest of her words. “…no one gets hurt.”

“Except that things like that only get worse with time,” Tara pointed out. “By giving in to it. Those desires just get stronger and stronger until they take control of the person.” She paused. “So we’re developing a society of people who have absolutely no control over their darker nature.”

Willow added with a grim nod, “People who act on every impulse that strikes them, without thought for morality or right and wrong.”

Buffy’s eyes widened with realization, as she spoke in a soft, hushed voice of horror, “We’re becoming the monsters.”

Willow was surprised at her friend’s insight. She had never thought of it quite like that. She nodded slowly.

“Some of us already are,” Tara agreed, her words pulling Buffy’s thoughts back to the training center and Julian.

“So what did they do to him – exactly?” she asked, slowly, cautiously, very sure that she was not going to like the answer.

Willow took a deep breath.

“They kept him in chains, blindfolded and alone for *days* when they first captured him” Tara spoke before she could, her voice carefully controlled, but trembling slightly with emotion. Buffy suddenly knew by her tone that Tara was one of only two people who had ever heard Julian’s story first-hand.

“They didn’t feed him – no one told him what was going on. No one said a word to him at all except to tell him to shut up. Anytime he tried to ask where he was, who they were – tried to talk at all – they’d hit him. Or worse.” She paused, her eyes brimming with angry tears as she went on, her voice lower and full of pain.

“When he finally stopped trying to talk – stopped trying to get away – it had been nearly a week. He was desperate with fear and starvation, and too weak by then to fight them off. They left his wrist chained, anyway. Wasn’t like he could do anything to defend himself. All of Riley’s men are pumped up with some kind of drug that makes them really strong.”

“Stronger than the average vampire?” Buffy guessed with a little grimace.

Tara nodded without smiling. “They forced him onto his knees and took the blindfold off. Of course, they had the room really bright. They did anything they could to make things as terrifying and disorienting as possible for him.”

“Brainwashing techniques 101,” Buffy muttered under her breath, thoroughly disgusted by what she was hearing.

Tara went on, “…and then they offered him blood.” A small, bitter smile crossed her lips as she added, “Only catch was – he had to earn it.”

There was no mistaking the terrible implication in her words. Buffy gasped as the truth of what Tara was saying hit her. She opened her mouth to speak, but could simply find no words.

Tara’s tears slipped down her face as she went on, feeling the pain of her friend as if it was her own, as she recounted the degradation that had been forced upon him. “Of course, he refused. He told them he’d rather starve. As best he could, anyway – he could barely speak by then. He hadn’t been allowed to in nearly a week, and as dehydrated as he was by then – well, it’s a wonder he could speak at all.”

She paused. “And they just hit him for talking. Punched him in the face for daring to speak. They told him that he didn’t have the option of starving – unless they wanted him to. He belonged to them, and they were going to do whatever they wanted with him.” Tara stopped, swallowing back a sob, struggling to keep her emotions under control.

Finally she went on in a voice that was low, measured, “And then they held him down…and they raped him. Every single one of those soldiers…”

Buffy’s eyes were full of horrified disbelief, only growing stronger at the implied revelation. “How many were there?” she asked in a hushed whisper.

Tara was silent for a long moment before she could find the strength to answer. “Eight.”

Buffy’s hand flew to her mouth, and she turned her head away, feeling sick. *Oh, God – God, no!*

After a long moment of silence in which they all tried to recover – the shock no less painful for the two who had heard it before – Tara went on. “Then they gave him the blood; they told him he’d *earned* it!” She paused, that bitter smile back in place. “He’d cried and screamed and begged them to stop – until they made him shut up, with their fists. They told him that if he didn’t shut up it was only going to be worse for him – and he tried – but he couldn’t stop crying.”

Tara was crying now as she told the horrific tale, and Buffy realized suddenly that her own face was streaked with tears as well. “So,” Tara went on through her tears, “one of those bastards held his hand over his mouth to keep him quiet while another was raping him. He was too weak to fight them off, but he tried anyway. He fought, and he screamed, and he begged – and when it was over, they called him a whore, and told him he was theirs, and they would do it again any time they felt like it. They threw the blood at him and left him there, bleeding on the floor and too badly hurt to get up.”

“My God,” Buffy whispered, speechless with horror at the images that filled her mind, unbidden.

Willow picked up the story, when Tara seemed too overwhelmed to go on. “Of course – the blood was drugged,” she said, her huge green eyes sober. “He was too starved by then to notice – probably to care. And that’s when the chip went in.”

“And then,” Tara spoke again, with a little more control. “The suffering *really* began.”

There was a long moment of silence before Willow asked softly. “Can you take hearing the rest?”

Buffy stared at her through wide, stricken eyes, hardly registering her words. Could it possibly *get* any worse? She nodded slowly, her eyes focused on Tara. If Julian had had to experience all of this because of her, she deserved no less than to have to hear every brutal, agonizing detail.

“They have ‘classes’,” Tara spoke the word with derision. “where they teach them how to behave around humans – what’s acceptable and what’s not. They tell them over and over how worthless and pathetic they are – that they’re only good enough to serve us. It’s brainwashing, Buffy, just like you said. You tell someone things like that enough – eventually they’re gonna believe it.”

She paused. “Especially when you’re driving the point home constantly with torture and brutality, every time they break one of the rules.”

“If they spoke out of turn, or tried to resist, or even looked at one of Riley’s men wrong – they’d be beaten, or – or worse.” She glanced down at Spike’s face, which still bore Riley’s scars, and said softly, “What Riley did to Spike is a common thing in the training centers. Julian has told me horrible things – vampires who had their hands dipped in holy water for trying to steal blood – and they keep them on the verge of starvation. Blood is used to control them. If they submit and do everything right, *maybe* they’ll get to eat. But one little mistake…” Tara shook her head sadly.

“Of course, they can’t fight back. The chip takes care of that. And if they try to escape – well, Julian tried once – but they caught him.” Her intense gray eyes focused on Buffy as she said, “They crushed his feet. With a sledgehammer. On the starvation rations they gave them, it took him months to heal.”

“Was that why,” Buffy had to stop to choke back a sob that rose in her throat. “was that why he was limping when Giles found him?”

Tara shook her head, a look of grief in her eyes as she said gently, sadly, “No, Buffy. His feet had healed by then. When Giles found him…he had just been…” She paused, swallowing back bitter rage and pain. “He had just been raped by one of the soldiers. That’s why he was having trouble walking.” She was silent for a moment before she went on in a soft voice of quiet rage, her words sending a chill down Buffy’s spine.

“You see – that’s the problem with vampire healing. They heal up exactly how they were before they were hurt.” Her voice broke, as she went on, “When he was turned – Julian was only eighteen – and a virgin in every sense of the word.” Her lips trembled as she lowered her head with a little gasp. “Every time – hurt him *so bad*!”

“Oh, God,” Buffy whispered, overwhelmed by what she was hearing, her eyes wide and distant as she tried to take it in. “Oh my God. Poor Julian!”

“And all the others, too, Buffy,” Willow reminded her, an urgency in her gentle, quiet voice as she met her friend’s eyes. “This happens all the time in the training centers.”

“It *is* just like the Nazis,” Buffy whispered, looking away. “I just can’t believe that – God -- *Riley* -- oh, *God*!” she moaned, overwhelmed as she put her head in her hands. It was just so *much*!

“And when he told me what those men did to him last night,” Tara went on, her voice trembling again with rising anger. “I just wanted to take them apart myself! They told him he was gonna pay for telling us what happened to him. They threatened to rape him again or take him away.”

“It’s been a long time since anyone’s messed with any of Giles’ vampires,” Willow commented sadly.

Buffy was crying softly, not aware as they continued their conversation around her. She looked up, her eyes wide and desperate. “I’m so sorry!” she sobbed brokenly. “God, I’m *so sorry*!”

“Buffy – this is not your fault,” Willow assured her gently. “You didn’t know what Riley was doing.”

“I thought you did,” Tara informed her in a meaningful tone, meeting her eyes. “Now that I know you didn’t – well, it makes a huge difference, Buffy.”

“It doesn’t make any difference at all!” Buffy argued tearfully, looking up at them through fresh tears. “I didn’t know because I didn’t *want* to know! I didn’t care! I just wanted to stay in my safe little life and not worry about what my husband was doing! I *knew* it was wrong! I knew it, and I…”

“Buffy?”

The small, frightened voice drew her attention instantly, and she looked down as Spike rose quickly from her lap, sitting up and looking at her with sleepy but apprehensive eyes. Only then did she realize that she had raised her voice in self-directed anger.

“Are you all right?” he asked softly, deep blue eyes searching hers with concern.

“Yeah,” she sniffled, her hand trailing down his arm as he pulled away, to take his hand in hers reassuringly. “I’m okay.” She looked across at Willow and Tara. “In fact – I’m more okay now than I’ve been in a long time. I’ve been completely blind.” She wiped quickly at her tears as she said in a decisive, firm voice, “I’d all but forgotten who I am – what I’m supposed to do.”

She paused, before going on with fire in her eyes, “Well, Slayer Buffy is back. And it’s time to take down some monsters.”