Title: Judgment
Author: Medea
Email: medealives@hotmail.com
Pairing: Willow/Angel friendship, Buffy/Spike
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Willow's joyride in 'Wrecked' was only the beginning of her downward spiral.
Spoilers: Through BtVS "Smashed" and "Wrecked"; and AtS "Lullaby"
Archive: Please do.
Disclaimer: Joss created. I am not Joss. Therefore, not mine, never will be. Pity, that.
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. For Willow/Angel fans -- it comes later in the story, but it *will* come.
Feedback: Much appreciated: medealives@hotmail.com

~Part: 10~


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?"




Next Chapter