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: 11~


"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.




Next Chapter