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: 19~


The room was still and shadowed. Not terribly cozy, but, then, Angel hadn't been expecting guests and nobody from Sunnydale had anticipated staying this long. Still, what the room lacked in comfort, Spike intended to make up for it by pampering his heartsick, steadfast little soldier as much as she'd let him.

With supreme tenderness, Spike knelt before Buffy and gently took one of her hands in his. He searched her expression for some clue as to what had cast a cloud over this girl who was the closest thing to sunlight he'd touched in a century. Wordlessly, he ventured a smile, squinting in quiet wonder when she hesitantly smiled back. So radiant. It almost hurt to look at her.

Delicately, he began dabbing her tattered fingertips with a washcloth he'd soaked in warm water. He'd already checked her hands and removed a few splinters. Now he soothed and caressed, wiping away the traces of blood and, he hoped, whatever else had caused her pain.

And she let him.

Damned if it wasn't one of the sweetest moments he'd had all week.

As he patted her hands dry with a towel, the barest hint of a smirk on his lips, Spike asked, "How is it I've spent so much time patchin' up your hands since you came back to us, luv?"

Buffy grinned awkwardly and half-exhaled, half-laughed. Almost shyly, she lowered her gaze to their joined hands. But she didn't answer. Must be bad. Spike hadn't known her to be without a blithe quip or snappy comeback more than a handful of times.

Like the time her mum told her about the tumor.

Or after the royal hell bitch took the Niblet away from her.

Spike wondered what she was trying to escape this time. Not a coffin, but obviously traumatic enough that she'd clawed her fingers bloody again.

"D'you want to talk?" he asked, gently circling his thumb over her palm. After a pause, he offered, "D'you want me to talk? I could tell you how the Little Bit is doing. Got some of your fight in her and her moves aren't half bad. Might be holdin' back a bit, but she's--"

"Could you just hold me?" Buffy interrupted softly. She raised her eyes to his. Such a simple gesture, a plea for consolation and an act of faith all in one, yet it rocked Spike to the core.

Could he?

*Could* he?

That wasn't a request, it was a gift.

Wordlessly, the blond vampire rose from his knees and sat beside Buffy on the edge of her bed. He encircled her waist with his arms and drew her back against him, nuzzling her brow with his cheek.

Minutes crept by. Beautiful, perfect minutes. Spike didn't know when he'd get another chance like this one, so he savored every second, every sensation. The heat of her body radiating over his deathly chill. That fierce, relentless Slayer pulse humming through him everywhere they touched. Smooth, silky hair, heady with the scent of flowers from that ridiculously over-priced designer shampoo she treated herself to. And just the feel of her relaxing against him.

If trust was something you could touch, if you could reach out your hand and grab it, Spike guessed it would feel like this.

He treasured it.

"Why do you do this for me?" Buffy whispered against his chest. "None of this is the way it's supposed to be."

"It isn't supposed to be this way," Willow protested, resting her forehead in her palms, her elbows propped on the small desk near her bed. "Those worlds, those people inside my head. They shouldn't be able to affect me like that."

"Slow down, Willow," Angel urged. He sat calmly, a few feet away, leaning forward in his seat and resting his arms on his knees as he watched her intently. "You're about to hyperventilate."

Willow let her head sink to the table with a soft moan. This was going to be a lot harder than she'd anticipated.

"It's okay to feel discouraged," Angel added after a few moments of silence.

A weak, shaky laugh slipped out. "I left discouraged way back a few panic attacks ago. Right now I'm hanging with 'severely crushed' and 'soundly defeated'. I'll *never* fix this! Not if someone from another dimension who's in my head can zap me out a window..."

As Willow rested her forehead against the cool wood of the desk, trying to clear all thought from her weary, sorely overtaxed mind, she could hear Wesley and Fred murmuring to each other across the room.

"Maybe if we enter this into our calculations and redo them--"

"No, too many variables. This has gone beyond anything we can plot. I can't even fathom the equations it would take--"

Above their hushed exchange, Angel's voice rose, calmly dispelling the nervous tension that filled the air. "Fred, Wesley, we're done for now. Willow needs some down time. We'll take the rest of the afternoon off and come back to this later."

After a brief pause, the soft sweep of a door opening and closing signaled the departure of Angel's co-workers. Willow was fairly sure that Angel was still seated across from her. She hadn't felt him get up and leave, although she realized she couldn't really trust her senses where he was concerned. Vampires could be pretty darn stealthy.

"I meant what I said." Angel's voice prompted the disheartened witch to raise her head. She saw understanding and compassion in his eyes. "You shouldn't push yourself too hard, especially not with something this big. Trust me, I've been there before."

Willow managed a small, rueful smile. "So, even vampires have their limits, huh?"

Angel managed a rueful half-smile, his eyes downcast. "Believe it or not, most do. If they don't learn on their own, eventually even the most driven learn the hard way from the Slayer. Including me." He fixed a sad yet compassionate gaze on Willow. "Determination can be a good thing, Willow, but not when it's pushed to the point of obsession."

A familiar, perplexed look descended upon Willow's features like a veil. Occasionally, her head bobbed and her lips parted as if she were about to speak, but for several moments she grappled silently with her thoughts. At last, in a small, meek voice, she whimpered, "But what if I don't know how to find those limits? I t-try," Willow's breath hitched in her throat, "but nothing is ever enough. When we stopped Glory, the very next night all the creepy ghoulies were out as usual, like nothing had happened. So we kept going...and there was always more danger...and how could I say no and let everyone down? They were counting on me, but I wasn't enough. I just wanted everyone to be-"

"-happy," Buffy whispered, blinking her eyes as she fought back the tears. "It was so hard for me, trying to hide what I really felt about being back from everyone. My friends were so happy...and so ready to have the strong, reliable Slayer back. But...the only thing...the only one who made me feel anything," Buffy paused and exhaled shakily, "was you."

"Shh," Spike hushed her, brushing his lips against her temple and enfolding her possessively in his embrace.

"No," Buffy shook her head weakly and squeezed her eyes shut. "I can't...it's all wrong. I'm wrong. I tried to be what everyone needed me to be, but it just ate away at me...and I couldn't stop wanting what you made me feel *every* *time*...and I hurt him. I've hurt him, and I've lost him, and I feel bad for thinking about him when you're holding me like this, and I *don't* feel bad, because no matter how much he loved me, it was Darla he turned to, and nothing makes any sense any more!"

"Stop."

Spike's grip was firm on Buffy's arms as he turned her to face him and silenced her with a stern, smoldering gaze. "No more fretting," he commanded in a low, velvety rumble. "You think this mess is because of something *you* did? Bollocks. Takes two to tango, luv. Even if your life were as cocked up as you think it is - which it's not - blame's not all on your shoulders, which means you can't make it right just by beating yourself up. And you bloody well don't owe anyone an apology for what you feel. So, enough talking."

"But-" Buffy protested, only to be cut off by a firm kiss. Anguish and compassion dueled in the joining of their mouths, yet Spike's relentless, sensual exploration gradually vanquished the pain and sorrow and frustration. In its place a primal hunger blossomed between them. Spike's kisses soon passed from soothing to demanding. Teeth came into play, tugging at lips and capturing tongues.

An urgent, desperate heat burned in icy blue depths as Spike pulled away and gazed into Buffy's eyes. "Just for a few hours, stop trying to save the world...stop trying to save everyone else but yourself," he entreated softly as his hands slipped beneath her shirt to caress her bare skin. He leaned forward and pressed his brow reverently against hers, letting his eyes slip shut. "So many nights, I dreamed of saving you. Let me save you now."

Buffy let out a yearning sigh, the last gasp of her inner doubts and self-recriminations, and gave herself up to the delirious, comforting sensations that Spike's fingertips teased out as they skimmed over her warm, soft curves. Their lips joined once more in loving communion as Slayer and vampire clasped each other tightly and sank down onto the bed.

"It won't make your job any easier for you to turn it into a punishment or imprisonment without parole," Angel said as he walked beside Willow toward the stairwell. He sympathized with her frustration, having shouldered his own burden of guilt for a hundred years, and he knew how paralyzing and oppressive that burden could be. Voices filtered up from the lobby, rising and falling in lively, carefree cadence, so *human* in their chorus that Angel grew even more convinced about what Willow needed right now. "You've run up against a wall. Take some time off to re-focus. The work will still be here when you get back."

Willow sighed, her eyes downcast, her face drawn and pensive. Angel paused and turned to face her. God, he hated this. He knew exactly how she felt and it pained him to think of Willow, or anyone else, grappling with the same gut-wrenching shame and regret that had reduced him to a miserable recluse for the better part of a century. He knew so well what it meant to make a series of poor judgments in the recklessness and innocence of youth, only to find himself transformed into a monster that visited unspeakable horrors upon the world.

Angel's chest ached where once a living heart had been. He felt a pang of sympathy for Willow, who looked both as young and uncertain as she had when he'd first met her in Sunnydale, and as old and weary as he sometimes felt.

"It just seems wrong. I mean, how can I take a break, kick back with chocolate and scented candles and fuzzy slippers...and...all that other self-indulgent, pamper-y stuff when all the people in those worlds I destroyed are...they're..."

Her rant faded and they stood together for several moments in awkward silence.

"Dead," Angel finished for her. "Willow, they're dead. You have the power to change that. I don't know how. I can't even fathom the kind of power it would take, but I wish someone had given me the same chance to do what you can, what you *will*. For now, though, they're dead, which means they're not going anywhere, and they won't get any worse if you take a few hours for yourself."

Another heartbeat approached. Angel's gaze flicked away from Willow toward the stairwell, and he smiled at the perfect timing as the gentle, doe-eyed face of Willow's girlfriend came into view.

"Leave the dead behind this afternoon," the dark vampire suggested. The slight racing of Willow's pulse as she glanced shyly at Tara told Angel all he needed to know about which buttons to push. "You can't save the world, let alone six worlds, if you can't even forgive yourself. Believe me, Willow, I've tried. You need to reconnect with what matters. Go out into the sunshine. Be with the living."

Tara stood a few paces away from them, patiently waiting for Willow's decision. Willow hesitated, her eyes still heavy with remorse and failure. She looked at Angel and he gave her a reassuring nod. When Willow shifted her gaze toward Tara, the honey-haired witch extended her hand in invitation.

Angel caught the faint scent of salt from Willow's grateful, if unshed, tears as she went to Tara.

Slipping her hand into Willow's, Tara asked, "Want to go for a walk?"

A hesitant grin blossomed on Willow's lips and she squeezed Tara's hand in reply. As they turned to go, Willow looked over her shoulder and said, "Thanks, Angel."

"Enjoy the sunshine," the dark vampire answered, acutely aware of the burns on his hands and arms: his own painful reminder of the limits to what kind of help he could offer her.

He looked down at his inflamed, partly charred skin and decided it might be a good idea to doctor them up with more aloe. His accelerated vampire healing had already kicked in, lessening the severity of the burns in the short time since he'd tried to haul Willow in through her window, but his arms still smarted.

It was on the way to his suite that he noticed it.

A sensation so far below what could be perceived by human senses that there was no equivalent in smell, sound, or taste. Something primal and feral that his demon recognized on a preternatural level; familiar, yet almost unfamiliar because it had been so long since he'd sensed it.

Even before Angel's conscious mind recognized what it was that tugged at his senses, he was filled with a strange foreboding, a desire both to seek out and to hide. Curiosity got the better of him, and without really thinking about it, he made his way up to one of the hotel's higher floors where the sensation grew stronger.

The truth bombarded him from multiple directions: his brain finally caught up with his surroundings as he realized he was in the corridor that led to Buffy's room; his sensitive hearing detected heady gasps and soft moans; rich, spicy pheromones wove their spell beneath his nose; and with sudden, painful clarity, Angel recognized the mysterious sensation that had drawn him here in the first place.

A vampire in heat.

Not just any vampire. Spike. It had been over a century, but Angel recognized Spike's unique signature of intensity and lust, felt it resonating in the air, and stopped cold. A sickening, bitter ache clenched inside him. He'd known. Buffy had even admitted as much when Giles had informed her of the threat from the Council. But it still hadn't prepared him for being confronted so brutally, so intimately, with the facts.

He stood, rooted to the floor for several moments, awash in a contradictory array of emotions. Jealous rage burned through his veins at the thought of his first, true love with Spike of all people. The fire of his anger was quelled, however, by bitter shame at the fact that he, himself, had hurt Buffy just as badly. A cruel, ironic voice in the depths of his mind even taunted him with the thought that this was probably what Spike must have felt when Angel, during his brief return to soullessness, had flaunted his intimate relations with Drusilla.

Angel wanted to charge in there and pull Spike off of her.

Without a word, he turned back to the stairwell instead.

"It's agonizing, isn't it?"

Such a furry, purring sound, Drusilla thought to herself as the odd, gray man spoke to her. His voice tickled her ears like a cat's whiskers, but above all else she heard his blood rushing like a mighty river. Silly kitty, to be so near the water. Doesn't realize the danger.

"You thirst for blood, don't you, demon?" the bearded, gray-haired man spoke again.

"He wants to play a game, but I am too cross for grandfather's riddles," Drusilla mused. Languidly, she leaned forward as far as her chains would allow and growled at him. "Naughty boys go to sleep without their bedtime story."

The odd man stared at her. It made Drusilla laugh. She could almost hear the clickety-clack of thoughts in his brain, but oh! was he in for a surprise. The lords and ladies were all at court, but they would not dance with him.

"He really did drive you insane," the man purred, although he was not at all warm and soft. "It's perfect. Angelus will have no one to blame but himself when you feed on his only son. He'll lose the one he holds most dear in this world to a creature of his own making."

"Ssshhhh," Drusilla chided him with a sly grin. "Mustn't make noise. Your house is made of glass and the little witch has been skipping stones." Her grin widened as she whispered, "Come closer and I'll tell you a secret, dearie."

The man wrinkled his brow, but moved closer, wary as a little mouse. Drusilla eyed him with interest. Suddenly, without warning, she pounced, but he was a quick one. She managed only to scrape his neck with her fangs and taste a tiny drop of his sweet blood before he leaped away. His voice was no longer warm and soft, and he called her bad, nasty names.

Angrily, he drew a cross out of his pocket and pressed it against her cheek.

Drusilla wailed and thought how nice it would be if she could eat the nasty man.




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