AUTHOR: Medea
TITLE: Judgment (10/?)
E-MAIL: medealives@hotmail.com
PAIRING: Willow/Angel friendship, Buffy/Spike, Willow/Tara
RATING: PG-13
SUMMARY: Willow's joyride in 'Wrecked' was only the beginning of her
downward spiral.
SPOILERS: Season 6 BtVS "Smashed" and "Wrecked"; and Season 3 AtS "Lullaby"
ARCHIVE: Please do.
DISCLAIMER: Joss created. I am not Joss. Therefore, not mine, never will be.
NOTE: A response to Kendra A's challenge to "fix" Wrecked, although I don't
really feel that the ep needed fixing. There's nothing wrong with taking a
character through the moral gray zone. I kinda thought it gave Willow some
interesting nuances.
NOTE 2: This is not part of the Masters and Minions universe -- Willow is
human. This went out un-beta'd, so all ghastly mistakes are wholly my fault.
DEDICATION: To Carrie and Jonquil, friends I'm glad I've made along the way.
Many thanks!
FEEDBACK: Much appreciated: medealives@hotmail.com
A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent. There
floated through my mind a line from the Bhagavad-Gita ...
"I am become death: the destroyer of worlds."
--J. Robert Oppenheimer's recollection of the Trinity test, 16 July 1945
Wesley puzzled over the dormant spheres.
He alternated between squinting at the seemingly lifeless globes and
scrutinizing the tome before him, running his index finger over the
weathered page as he read. Every theory he'd formed about Ms. Rosenberg's
trans-dimensional explorations had promptly dissolved when Buffy had placed
the inactive Ptersian spheres on his desk that morning. Coupled with
Willow's return to consciousness, apparently it had been quite an eventful
evening.
Sighing, Wesley leaned back in his chair and rested his chin in his hand.
Why the delay?
If Willow had used the spheres to draw energy from another dimension, why
had they remained active after her defeat -- only to go dormant this
morning? What sort of energy had they contained up until now?
Wesley leaned back toward his desk and flipped to another section in
Norton's Annotated Dimensional Index. He scrutinized several entries,
cross-referenced "energy sources" with "trans-dimensional projection",
reviewed his notes on portals and self-transference, but nothing remotely
resembled the situation that had presented itself. Reluctantly, Wesley
acknowledged the obvious: as extensive as Angel's library was, the answer to
this mystery wouldn't be found in books.
There was no getting around it. He needed to speak with Willow herself.
All things considered, Wesley would rather bury himself in a nice, quiet
stack of manuscripts. Cracking a conundrum was a challenge for which he'd
been trained. Awkward personal confrontations were, sadly, all too familiar
to him, but not his cup of tea.
It had been difficult enough for Wesley to overcome his own socially inept
tendencies. Certainly, he'd had a crash course in juggling the spectrum of
emotional volatility ever since he'd started working with Angel, who was
even more repressed than he was, and Cordelia, who, bless her well-meaning
heart, had raised tactlessness to an art form.
Theirs was an odd, dysfunctional family, albeit one that had become
comfortable, even reassuring. That was, when someone or something wasn't
trying to kill them. Or when Angel wasn't busy firing them....or...when
Cordelia wasn't joking about having two brawny Pylean guards behead him and
Gunn...
Well, all right, it was as comfortable is it got.
But the arrival of the Sunnydale group had introduced yet another element of
tension to their lives. What little semblance of normalcy he, Angel, Gunn,
Cordelia and Fred had managed to piece together after fending off the worst
threats against Connor had been thrown completely askew.
He looked forward to entering Ms. Rosenberg's room about as much as he
relished the thought of returning to Pylea for more abuse at the hands of
boorish demonic louts. Confronting Willow about her experiences was the
least of his worries. From what Angel said, she posed little threat in her
current state. It was the constellation of temperaments surrounding her that
Wesley dreaded. The tension between Angel and Spike was palpable; adding
Cordelia to that mix merely ensured disaster. Worse still, the silent regret
that hung thick between Angel and Buffy was suffocating.
Hardly the ideal conditions for a chat. Wesley estimated that his chances of
getting Ms. Rosenberg to speak freely were: close to zero.
Considering how he and his colleagues usually fared, he'd faced worse odds.
Wesley sighed, rose from his seat, and gathered his notes and a few charts.
No use putting it off any longer. If need be, he'd chase the others out of
Ms. Rosenberg's room so they could converse free of distractions.
Now...which face should he use to stare down two dominant male vampires, a
fearless, veteran Slayer, and a Seer whose stubbornness exceeded that of the
other three combined? The stern, officious Watcher mask, or the grim scowl
of potential doom?
As he climbed the stairs, he mused over how often he'd had the chance to use
the latter expression lately. However, when he reached Ms. Rosenberg's room,
he discovered that he needn't have worried about throwing everyone out.
Apparently, Angel had done it for him.
*****
At the soft rapping, Angel left the seat where he'd been keeping his vigil
beside Willow and went to unlock the door. He hoped it was Wesley -- he
didn't want to go another round with Buffy or Cordelia. Spike he'd just as
soon pound into a wall or plunge in a vat of holy water.
Naturally, Buffy meant well, and Angel couldn't blame her for being a little
gruff with the witch who had hurt her sister. But her stern
cross-examination merely drove Willow into her shell. Meanwhile, Cordelia's
unrestrained hostility toward Spike wasn't helping matters.
Although Angel couldn't help smiling at some of the scathing remarks she'd
hurled at that eternal adolescent. Sometimes Cordy's razor-sharp tongue was
a beautiful thing.
Thankfully, it was indeed Wesley waiting in the hall. He clutched an array
of loose-leaf notes and weathered parchment documents. Angel surmised that
Wesley had hit a snag in his research, and noted with amusement the look of
relief on the ex-Watcher's face as he scanned the nearly empty room.
"How is she?" Wesley asked.
Angel ushered him in and locked the door behind them. "Okay for now. I sent
Fred out to get her something to eat. She hasn't said very much. She's
pretty drained, physically and mentally."
"Hardly surprising," Wesley acknowledged. "Do you think she'd be up to
answering a few questions?"
Angel nodded curtly. "From you, yes."
The dark vampire crossed the room and settled himself on the edge of
Willow's bed, motioning for Wesley to take the chair. Wesley set his papers
on the desk, then sat down.
Willow reclined against a pile of pillows, feet tucked to one side. She
stared at the lamp, apparently lost in thought and unconcerned about
damaging her retinas. Angel drew her back to her current surroundings with a
gentle prompt.
"Willow?"
She blinked and turned a drawn, solemn expression toward them. Seeing
Wesley, she offered a hesitant smile that failed to enliven her eyes.
"Research time?"
"Only if you feel able," Wesley replied, returning her smile with a bit more
warmth.
Willow nodded, but said nothing. At her silence, Wesley hesitated briefly,
then continued.
"I suppose we'd better begin by establishing the basic parameters. Can you
estimate how long you were away from this dimension?"
Willow frowned thoughtfully, closed her eyes and mouthed silent
calculations. When she reopened her eyes, she said, "I think it was about
350 years, give or take a decade."
Angel's lips parted slightly, his only outward reaction to her stunning
revelation. Wesley's hand trembled as he jotted down a few notes.
"What is the last thing you recall before you left this dimension?"
The question seemed to upset Willow. Angel sensed her increased heart rate
and body temperature, and observed how she wrapped her arms around herself
and clenched her fists. He resisted the impulse to place a reassuring hand
on her arm, since she'd cringed at previous offers of comfort. Eventually,
Willow answered in a small, distant voice.
"We were in the cemetery. I remember...I was trying to break free. Buffy and
the others had closed me in...they had Ptersian spheres. I tried to open a
portal before they could drain me. Then...something ...snapped. I lost
control. Everything was a blur in my head. The next thing I knew, I was in a
village...on a wide, grassy plain...I wasn't sure where. I thought I'd
transported myself a few hundred miles away, until I saw the sky."
"The sky?" Wesley echoed, his brow furrowing.
"Two suns," Willow explained. "I tried to convince myself that I was
dreaming, or that I'd hit my head, but after growing up on a Hellmouth, it's
kinda hard to persuade myself that something isn't real just because it
seems strange. Usually, it's the strange stuff that's real. After four or
five years, I stopped expecting to wake up."
Angel listened, dumbstruck, as Willow narrated her voyages. He knew from
personal experience how hostile other dimensions could be to beings from
this realm. True, he'd been pleasantly surprised to discover he could walk
unharmed in the rays of the Pylean sun, but his centuries in hell had been
pure torment, demon though he was.
Willow's litany of lifetimes held its own measure of pain. Her eyes grew
haunted as she recalled starving to death, along with the entire village,
when an endless drought had ravaged the world with two suns. She had been
hunted, tortured, gutted, enslaved, and killed in one incarnation after
another.
Each life, however, had been just long enough for her to forge bonds of
friendship and love -- and see them torn asunder when tragedy struck.
Angel grieved for her.
He also worried about her. Willow was holding something back, something that
troubled her deeply. Angel wasn't sure whether it was her inflection, or the
way she paused, or the words she chose, but when she described her desperate
struggles and failures from one dimension to the next, she gave the
impression that something had been stalking her.
Something she knew.
A tentative knock at the door interrupted Willow's strange, sad tale. Wesley
took the opportunity to scribble a few more notes, while Angel went to see
who it was.
Fred grinned shyly at Angel as she stood clutching a brown paper bag in the
hallway.
"Breakfast brigade! I wasn't sure what to get, so I got a little of
everything. Juice, coffee, donuts, muffins, and those little breakfast
burritos. You know, they didn't have breakfast burritos before I...I'm
rambling, aren't I? Can I come in?"
"Sure." Angel managed a bemused half-smile and stepped aside.
Fred approached Willow hesitantly. "You're up. Angel thought you might be
hungry."
Willow nodded and her eyes shone briefly with gratitude. "Thanks. Food would
be of the good."
Willow's non-threatening demeanor seemed to encourage Fred, who became even
more animated. "Great! I've got it all. Would you like coffee? I've got
coffee?"
"Big neg on the caffeine," Willow declined hastily. "Makes me kinda spazzy,
which would be bad. Got any blueberry muffins?"
"Poppy seed?" Fred offered hopefully.
"That sounds good."
Fred fussed with the paper bag for awhile, spreading its contents out on the
end of the desk, then left Willow to her breakfast. Curious about Wesley's
research, she peeked over his shoulder at his notes.
"Are you any closer to an answer?" Fred asked softly, her eyes darting
self-consciously toward Willow.
Shaking his head, Wesley nibbled absently on the tip of his pen. "I'm going
to have to look up the dimensions she described and try to map her
trajectory. Something bothers me about that last fight before she left our
dimension."
Fred and Wesley were soon engaged in an intense discussion of the new spin
that Willow's description of her experience put on the data they had
compiled thus far. So engrossed were they in their exchange of theories that
they were oblivious to the wistful smile that spread across Willow's face as
she watched them.
Angel did notice.
It was the first genuine, lasting smile he'd seen on her face since her
arrival. It also seemed to be contagious, because Angel found himself
smiling as well.
When Willow realized that Angel was grinning at her, her smile faded
somewhat. She ducked her head and concentrated on her poppy seed muffin.
Hoping to lighten her mood, Angel teased quietly, "Careful -- for a minute
there, you looked like Willow Rosenberg."
Angel was pleased to see her smile return, although it was weaker and her
eyes glimmered with sadness. Willow gazed at Wesley and Fred and remarked,
"I remember research parties. We'd all sit around and trade ideas about icky
monsters and dire prophecies. Xander and Buffy would have contests to see
who could eat the most junk food. It was fun, in a weird,
trying-not-to-get-killed kind of way. I miss that."
"You'll be part of the research parties again," Angel assured her. He
paused, remembering how desperately he'd wanted to work his way back into
Cordy's good graces after he'd bottomed out last year. "It will take time
for your friends to accept you as part of the team again. You hurt them, and
you'll have to work to earn their trust. But they'll forgive you. If I
learned anything while I was in Sunnydale, it was that you and your friends
stick together. It's why nothing has beat you yet."
To Angel's alarm, his attempt to raise Willow's spirits had the opposite
effect. The tears that she had been holding back now spilled over her lashes
and she shook her head. "Angel, I know what you're trying to do, and I
appreciate it. But that's not it."
Taking a deep, shuddering breath, Willow continued, "I'm not going back to
Sunnydale. I can't. It would be too dangerous for me to be around the
Hellmouth, or even near Dawn. I can't go home again."
*****
Anya's head snapped up. She halted her late-night inventory of amulets in
the basement and listened. After a few moments, she heard a dull thump,
followed by shuffling, coming from the store. Her heart pounded. Nervously,
she reached for the heavy, wooden statue of a Minoan fertility goddess that
sat on a nearby shelf.
She might be frightened, but she wasn't about to let a prowler abscond with
*her* merchandise.
As cautiously and silently as she could, Anya crept upstairs and inched her
way into the main shop area, hoping to surprise the intruder.
However, she stopped short when she saw a familiar figure struggling to pick
up a weighty, oversized tome that had fallen from one of the bookshelves. A
source of his difficulty was the thick cast over his right arm, which was
apparently broken.
Further injuries were evident when he raised his head at her approach,
revealing a few severe bruises on his bespectacled face.
Aghast, Anya murmured, "Giles?"
(To Be Continued)
AUTHOR: Medea
TITLE: Judgment (11/?)
E-MAIL: medealives@hotmail.com
PAIRING: Willow/Angel friendship, Buffy/Spike, Willow/Tara
RATING: PG-13
SUMMARY: Willow's joyride in 'Wrecked' was only the beginning of her
downward spiral.
SPOILERS: Season 6 BtVS "Smashed" and "Wrecked"; and Season 3 AtS "Lullaby"
ARCHIVE: Please do.
DISCLAIMER: Joss created. I am not Joss. Therefore, not mine, never will be.
NOTE: A response to Kendra A's challenge to "fix" Wrecked, although I don't
really feel that the ep needed fixing. There's nothing wrong with taking a
character through the moral gray zone. I kinda thought it gave Willow some
interesting nuances.
NOTE 2: This is not part of the Masters and Minions universe -- Willow is
human. This went out un-beta'd, so all ghastly mistakes are wholly my fault.
DEDICATION: To Carrie and Jonquil, friends I'm glad I've made along the way.
Many thanks!
FEEDBACK: Much appreciated: medealives@hotmail.com
"Anya, there's really no need to -- OW!!"
Rupert Giles abandoned his characteristic gentility and swatted Anya's hand
away from his face. Although she sulked, the ex-demon made no further
attempt to dab his bruises and scrapes with alcohol-soaked cotton balls.
"Thank you, Anya, my injuries were painful enough the first time around,"
Giles bit out curtly, wincing at the sting of alcohol on his abraded skin.
"Well, excuse me for trying to help," Anya snapped indignantly. Stepping
back, she appraised him and added. "It's just that you look so gruesome.
What happened?"
"I met up with a would-be assassin," Giles muttered.
"Would be? Does that mean he's--?"
"Dead, yes. Quite dead, as a matter of fact."
"Oh."
Anya stared at him awkwardly.
Tired, more tired than he'd been since their battle with Glory, Giles
brought his good hand up to his face and massaged the bridge of his nose.
The long flight and subsequent attempt on his life were starting to catch up
with him. Suddenly lightheaded, he swayed. Anya's arm shot out, steadying
him, as she helped him sit down.
"Maybe you should stay off your feet. Wouldn't want you falling down and
hurting yourself, or knocking over any more of the merchandise."
"Heaven forbid," Giles murmured.
Anya sat down across from him and gawked at him in anticipation. "So...back
in town. Fending off the hit men. Getting pulverized. Any particular
occasion?"
The weight of the world seemed to press down on his chest, painfully
squeezing his heart. A vision of Buffy's eyes, fixed and moistened with
unshed tears at the news that he was returning to England, crept into his
mind. She had looked so abandoned, so alone.
So much like a frightened child.
Softly, Giles acknowledged, "Just doing my job."
After a brief pause, Giles announced, "I know it's late, but I need to call
everyone here for a meeting. Buffy's future may depend on it, not to mention
my life."
"You can't," Anya blurted out.
Irritated, Giles snapped, "Anya, this is hardly the time for--"
"I mean you can't get everyone here right away. They're in L.A.," she
clarified hastily.
"Los Angeles?"
"There was a problem with Willow..."
*****
Spike hated sitting on his arse. Hated that he couldn't smoke -- damn baby
upstairs, damn sun outside. Hated that he was stuck lounging in the Poof's
froofy four-star lobby, while Angel was up trying to out-morose the witch.
Above all, he hated that he had to listen to Xander Harris gripe.
"Shouldn't he be changing diapers or something? I should be the one in there
talking to Willow."
"Bloody hell, stop whining already. At least you didn't have to sleep on a
grimy work-out mat," Spike growled, craning his head to one side in an
attempt to reduce the stiffness in his neck.
The Prom Princess had "forgotten" to vamp-proof a guest room for him, so
Spike had slept in Angel's basement practice room. Slept? Hardly. Suffocated
was more like it. The space reeked of the great, hulking Poof...and, rather
interestingly, of human sweat.
Mild, feminine sweat.
Angel was just swimming in shameful little secrets these days...
"No, but I did get to hear Deadboy serenade the munchkin at 2:00 a.m. --
when he wasn't hovering over *my* best friend," Xander retorted crossly. "My
best friend, who he's tried to kill before, and who he doesn't know half as
well as I do, because, hey, her best friend? That would be me, not him."
"Oh, please," Spike muttered. "Spare us."
"Guys, knock it off," Buffy interrupted sternly. Slouching on the plush
settee in the middle of the lobby, she sighed, "At least she's talking to
someone. That's a start."
"Besides, sometimes it's hard to open up to your friends," Tara added,
raising her eyebrows hopefully. "That's why people go to counselors. They
need a good listener, but one who isn't so close to everything."
"Which would be fine, except that Will's new counselor is the poster child
for psychotic multiple-personality disorders," Xander mused dryly.
"He *is* a disorder," Spike agreed with a scowl.
Spike was spared the horror of actually bonding with the git over their
residual dislike of Angel when the priggish ex-Watcher and the skittish
little snip appeared at the top of the stairs. He felt a slight, sentimental
pang as he watched them descend toward the lobby. They chattered on about
something, the perfect picture of quaint little bookworms.
Just the sort he and Dru used to eat when she was in the mood for something
sweet.
He blinked and shook himself out of his reverie as Buffy rose to her feet
and greeted Angel's co-workers. "So, any breakthroughs?"
"Yes, although the details Willow was able to give us have raised a few
questions that will require further research," Wesley replied. "In fact, we
may need to go over your last confrontation with Willow again."
"What more do you need to know?" Buffy asked.
Fred's eyes twinkled and her entire body quivered with animation as she
eagerly blurted out, "We're trying to calculate the magnitude of the force
that could have propelled her on a trajectory through multiple dimensions.
We need to map the dimensions specifically to plot a vector for each leap,
but it will help if we know what kind of momentum she started with."
Xander stood, gestured for a time-out, and quipped, "Translation for us
English-speakers?"
With an apologetic tilt of his head, Wesley explained, "Apparently, Willow
had quite the experience. She was thrust -- inadvertently, it seems -- from
one dimension to the next. To use a crude analogy, it may have been similar
to skipping a rock across the surface of a lake."
"Only Willow was the rock," Buffy murmured, frowning in comprehension.
"She remembered all that? I would've thought it would have been a big blur,"
Xander added.
Wesley and Fred exchanged an awkward glance. Spike recalled the question
he'd asked a haunted, subdued Buffy the night she'd returned from the grave,
and realized the boy's mistake. He fixed the ex-Watcher with a steady gaze
and asked, "How long was she gone?"
It was a moment before Wesley answered. Then, quietly, he said,
"Approximately three-and-a-half centuries."
"Centuries? As in those things that measure historical eras instead of
people's lives?" Xander protested, aghast. "But she wasn't even gone long
enough for us to see her disappear."
Buffy's eyes took on a distant, slightly pained look. "Time passes
differently..."
"Centuries..." Xander murmured numbly.
The emptiness in Buffy's voice stabbed at Spike's gut. However, just as he
was about to rise to his feet and offer her a supportive nudge, she lifted
her chin with determination and said, "So, where do we start? You pretty
much know about the spheres..."
"Centuries..." repeated Xander.
"It would be helpful if Tara could give us more detail about the dynamics of
the conflict during the spell, a 'feel' for the power, if you will," Wesley
proposed.
Tara nodded, then inclined her head toward the blond vampire and added,
"Spike might be able to give you a good description, too. He was pretty
attuned to the magic."
Spike smirked at the uneasy grimace on Wesley's face that Tara's suggestion
elicited. Nonetheless, he shrugged and followed Tara and Wesley into the
office. Buffy, Fred and Xander joined them and settled in with a stack of
dusty, leather-bound tomes, most of which looked older than Spike. Wesley
gave them descriptions of the dimensions Willow had mentioned, and set them
to looking for any references that matched. He then concentrated on
interrogating Spike and Tara.
Wesley pressed for specifics about every minute detail of their attempt to
restrain the witch, to the point that Spike felt like he was going
cross-eyed. Bugger it all, he knew there was a reason he made himself scarce
when the Slayer and her gang were researching.
Slowly, though, sketches of a model began to appear on the white board that
hung on the wall behind the coffee maker. Spike arched an eyebrow in
amusement every time Fred went to jot down an equation or plot a vector. Her
meticulous attention to each symbol and her child-like compulsion to draw
each segment in a different color reminded him of Dru. He sighed. How his
Dark Goddess had loved to fuss over her dolls' seating arrangement at those
damn tea parties.
He knew sod all about physics. Might've been easier to get rid of the damn
chip if he'd had any aptitude for science, but all that math was more
foreign to him than Fyarl. So it irritated Spike when Wesley and Fred stood
gaping at the board, as if it held the secrets to the Universe, when the
rainbow scribbles looked like so much Jabberwocky to him.
"Come on, already -- what's the story?" Spike growled.
"Dear God," Wesley murmured numbly.
"Can th-that be right?" stammered Fred.
"What?!" Buffy demanded, shifting her gaze expectantly from one to the
other.
Wesley shook himself from his daze and explained, "The dimensions Willow
seems to have traversed are spaced rather far apart...well, in a manner of
speaking. For her to have crossed them and sustained the momentum for three
hundred and fifty years..."
When Wesley trailed off, Fred concluded, "It would have taken a pretty big
jump start. Part of it could have been a slingshot effect. The more force
you used to contain her magic in the Ptersian spheres, the harder she
resisted, until it all snapped. But...the size of the force...just what
class witch was she?"
Xander, Tara and Buffy looked uneasily at each other. Grimly, Spike
understood what the mousy little brunette was driving at. Past few months,
he'd sensed pretty formidable power in the witch.
"Could she have gotten stronger from her visits to that Rack guy?" Xander
wondered.
At Fred's puzzled expression, Buffy clarified, "Warlock. Underground dealer
in dark magic."
"Doubt it," Spike frowned at the whelp's speculation. "Chits go to Rack for
a quick fix. Feels good, but after too long it trashes 'em, like junkies.
Doesn't make 'em stronger; makes 'em weaker."
Wesley seconded Spike's assessment. "As with the body, the mind strengthens
with exercise. Willow must have been stretching her abilities to the limits
over an extended period of time."
"Glory," Buffy murmured.
Comprehension dawned on the Sunnydale group. Wesley's diagnosis placed
Willow's efforts to help fend off the hell god in a new perspective. In the
darkest hour, her magic and determination had been one of the few things
holding everyone together. It hadn't occurred to her friends that this might
have taken a severe toll on her, mentally or physically.
She'd handled everything without complaining.
Timidly, Fred surveyed the sober faces around her and asked, "Who's Glory?"
When Buffy, Xander and Tara failed to respond, Spike muttered with a scowl,
"Bloody bad news's what she was. Hell god. Nasty bitch."
Fred's eyes widened and her mouth formed an astonished 'O'. "Wow...a ...a
god? I guess that would have strained a mortal witch's powers a little bit."
"Well, yes," Wesley conceded. "Although the respite after Glory's defeat
would have allowed Willow's power to settle back to more normal levels."
Xander and Tara exchanged a solemn glance. Resting his elbows on his knees,
Xander lowered his eyes for a moment, then said, "Willow didn't really get a
chance to power down. While Buffy was...gone...we kind of needed her help
with the usual Sunnydale freak show."
A gloom settled over the room, but Spike was in no mood to listen to the
children wallow in guilt. "Nobody forced the witch to go to Rack's," he
pointed out. "Just 'cos she had power to burn doesn't mean she had to go
dark."
Buffy agreed, although remorse still haunted her expression. "Willow made
her own choices. She may not have had much of a choice when we were fighting
Glory, but experimenting with the darker magic came later. She even admitted
she'd done it out of boredom. Besides, you didn't have a Slayer, but you
still had to deal with life on the Hellmouth. You couldn't have known."
"I should have known."
The familiar, mild-mannered voice drew all eyes to the doorway, where Rupert
Giles stood, haggard and battered, beside Anya and Dawn. Spike looked at the
overnight bags piled at their feet, which suggested an extended stay. Not a
good sign. Immediately, his guard went up.
"Giles?" Buffy whispered in disbelief.
Slayer and Watcher regarded each other with a mixture of sorrow and relief.
Relief won out, and Buffy rushed forward to swallow Giles in a fierce hug.
Meanwhile, Xander gathered Anya into his arms and pressed a light kiss
against her forehead.
"You came back," Buffy murmured against her mentor's chest.
"Mind the arm," Giles winced.
Chagrined, Buffy released him and stepped back. "What happened? Is everyone
okay?"
She scanned her sister and Anya for similar injuries. Spike, likewise,
turned a critical eye to the Niblet, his nerves on full alert at the thought
that something had threatened her while they'd been away.
"We're good," Dawn assured her. "But Giles had kind of a rough welcome
home."
At Buffy's pointed stare, Giles explained, "I've had another falling out
with the Council. This is serious, Buffy. I think you'd better sit down."
"How is dear old Quentin?" Wesley asked, his voice seething with sarcasm.
Giles turned a knowing gaze to his fellow exile and said, "Worse than I had
ever imagined. He, and the entire Council."
Xander gestured toward the sling and remarked, "I take it they're
responsible for your latest trophy."
Nodding, Giles continued, "One of their assassins tailed me from the
airport, tried to run my car off the road before I could reach Sunnydale.
I'm afraid my arm is still rather sore. You wouldn't happen to have any
aspirin, would you?"
Fred snorted, "Do we ever! You should see the collection of pills Cordy
keeps on hand because of her visions."
"Er...yes," Giles stammered. Turning to Dawn, he said with a gentle smile,
"I think I left the salve for your scars in the glove compartment. Why don't
you fetch it, and then see if you can find Cordelia and persuade her to part
with a few painkillers for an old librarian."
"Sure," Dawn agreed with a smile.
"I think Cordelia is up in Angel's room with Connor. I'll show you," Fred
offered brightly.
Giles waited until Dawn was well out of earshot. When he looked back to the
others, his expression revealed the gravity of the situation.
"So, what's the sitch?" Buffy asked in a low voice.
"The Council wanted to prevent me from sharing what I'd learned," Giles
began.
"What, that they're a bunch of stuffy old weasels who poison their own
Slayers?" Buffy sneered with disdain. "Too late, already figured that part
out."
"The Watchers poisoned you?!" Spike demanded incredulously. At the stern,
affirmative gleam in Buffy's eyes, Spike's blood boiled. He almost hoped
that his suspicions were correct, and that the Council would be sending more
assassins. Chip be damned, he wanted to kill the lot of 'em.
"Er, do continue, Giles," Wesley interjected, eyeing the sullen vampire
uneasily.
"For several weeks after I left Sunnydale, I was uncertain as to whether I'd
made the right decision. I consulted the journals left behind by my
predecessors for any insights about how other Watchers adjusted their
mentoring to meet the needs of Slayers who survived to adulthood. Believe
me, I was completely unprepared for what I found."
"Something tells me it had nothing to do with how to find a nice young man
for the Slayer, or whether her father or her Watcher had first dibs on
walking her down the aisle," Xander muttered, encircling Anya even more
tightly in his embrace.
"I only wish that had been the case," Giles confirmed sadly. "Unfortunately,
they were never given the chance to ponder such matters. Any Slayers who
survived the Cruciamentem and didn't fall in combat by their early twenties
were killed by the Council."
A low growl rumbled in Spike's throat and he immediately moved to Buffy's
side, placing a protective hand on her shoulder. Otherwise, the room was
frozen in stunned silence. One face after another contorted in a grim mask
of horror. Xander closed his eyes and rested his brow against Anya's, as if
to block out the news. Wesley sank into the chair behind the desk.
Buffy stood her ground and clenched her jaw. When she finally found her
voice, she whispered hoarsely, "Why?!"
"Because of what happened to Slayers who lived long enough. A Slayer's
unique qualities set her apart from ordinary humans. After several years,
some Slayers developed a sense of kinship with the creatures they had been
trained to destroy. Many of them began to question their calling, to the
point that the Council found them too difficult to manage..."
"And so the Council killed them," Buffy concluded in a small voice.
A storm raged in icy blue depths as Spike steeled her with his gaze. "They
even think of layin' a finger on you, and I'll kill 'em all. I swear it."
His eyes firmly fixed on hers, Spike grasped her hand in his and held it
tightly, daring the bastards to come.
(To Be Continued)