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: 22~


Get in, watch, neutralize the target, get out.

It was a routine so ingrained in the team of men that orders were no longer necessary. All that changed from assignment to assignment were the locations and targets.

Quick. To the point. Uncomplicated.

At each site, their base of operations was identical. A facility was secured: warehouse, garage, anything centrally located yet easily overlooked. The surveillance network went up, first around the perimeter, then around the target. A communications hub was activated. Weapons were unpacked, assembled, and double-checked for readiness.

All within a matter of hours.

Once the cell was in place, observation set in until conditions were optimal for a strike.

Waiting. Watching.

The outside world rarely intruded. Hours passed, day gave way to night which yielded to dawn, but the men noted only the echo of darkening or lightening sky on the pale video screens of their monitors. They knew it was morning not by the glorious sunrise but because it was the scheduled time for changing shifts. They knew night had fallen because the time signature on their laptops read 9:00 pm.

They were a team of six; one of the Council's elite units.

Together, they functioned like a machine.

But...

Like any machine, they could be sabotaged.

Without warning, the screen for the video monitor to their main access blinked out.

An instant later, a dull thump sounded against the door to the street.

Five members of the team looked up from their stations, glancing quickly at each other and then at the door. Nothing had disrupted their covert operation since they'd pulled up in the van and established a base camp three days ago. They left only for food and each of them knew to signal for help if necessary. Their sixth had gone out for provisions scarcely ten minutes ago; too soon to have returned.

Deviation from the routine spelled potential threat.

As procedure dictated, one man established contact with the Council's monitors in London. A second man initiated visual and audio recording of their headquarters to capture all evidence for later analysis should the threat prove real. Two arrayed themselves within a ten-meter radius of the door, weapons to the ready.

The fifth man approached the wall beside the door, listened momentarily, then opened the door while standing clear of the doorway.

The sixth member of the team collapsed just inside the entry, dead.

His nearest colleagues stared aghast at his mutilated, pale corpse, but only for a split second. Years of intense discipline kicked in and the man at the door quickly pulled the body inside while scanning the street outside for activity.

The street was deserted and quiet. Only distant sounds of traffic could be heard through the night.

The operative who had pulled his fallen comrade inside quickly shut and bolted the door.

Grimly, the five survivors surveyed the remains of the man who had been part of their team. His limbs and joints glared at unnatural angles; deep lacerations covered his entire body; two macabre, empty cavities were all that were left of his eyes; and his skin had the characteristic pallor of someone who'd been drained by--

"Vampires," one of the operatives observed soberly.

"He was a twelve-year veteran. He knew how to handle vampires," another countered, a slight edge of disbelief in his voice.

All five men frowned as they assessed their situation. A tense silence stretched out until one of them announced curtly, "I'll order a replacement."

Beneath the cool, detached veneer they maintained as they set about dealing with their situation, the members of the team were shaken.

They were professionals. This shouldn't have happened.

It had the potential to disrupt the entire plan. That shouldn't happen.

The plan was perfect.

Seamless.

Each of the five survivors mentally ran through the same, troubling scenarios. Unfortunate coincidence? Not possible. Their comrade knew how to keep an eye out for vamps and defend himself if necessary. He'd been well-armed. Betrayal? Again, not possible, *absolutely* not possible. Nobody save two senior members of the Council knew of their mission and their specific location. Not even the other team. And the six members of this team were veteran covert operatives -- they knew how to make themselves invisible. No one ever saw them coming; no one was ever left alive to note that they'd been somewhere.

No living witnesses.

True...none living.

The living never had the chance to watch long enough to see this invisible team through the patterns it left behind. But the dead were quite another matter.

And there were those among the dead who had been watching and studying with interest for quite a long time.

Outside, on the roof of a nearby building, Ramon Diaz looked down at the door through which his kill had been retrieved. He smiled enigmatically. It had been a long time since he had savored the satisfaction of breaking an agent of the Watchers Council.

The Spanish vampire closed his eyes and let the lingering taste of blood and revenge flood his senses.

He opened his eyes for a final glance at the door before departing.

"Let's finish this, shall we, gentlemen?" Diaz murmured.

Willow's head ached.

She sat in the Hyperion's office area, her feet tucked beneath her on the stylish, leather, retro armchair and wished that she could just close her eyes and escape.

But escape was impossible; short of cutting off her own head, she couldn't escape. Kind of like being a vampire, she guessed. Well, okay, not so much; vampires had to worry about sunlight and stakage, too. Bad analogy.

Absently, Willow massaged her temples and muttered, "What I wouldn't give for a pipe of chicum weed."

Wesley peered at her through his glasses, failing miserably in his attempts to appear sympathetic, or at least neutral, rather than dubious. "A pipe? I wasn't aware that you smoked," he said.

He scribbled something on a notepad.

A familiar voice spoke from the corner behind Wesley, "Now that I have seen the elusive ghost who haunted my apprentice's eyes, I must wonder about our evenings by the fire: was it your taste or his own that led Poydras to smoke with me?"

Willow smiled wearily past Wesley to Garat, her mentor from another dimension who had somehow ended up in this one.

Indeed, that was the source of her headache.

Ever since Tara had brought her back from the park, Willow had been ensconced in the office with Wesley, Fred, and Tara, feeling her shoulders slump beneath the fatiguing weight of well-meaning questions while experiencing her own, unique brand of vertigo as she carried on a separate conversation with Garat, who was invisible to everyone else, although he seemed to be able to see the others. It was uncomfortably like the stomach-lurching, head-swimming double vision she'd had when she'd first regained her senses in this dimension.

"I'd say that chicum weed was definitely a guilty pleasure for both of us, Garat," Willow mused, feeling a moment's comfort at the familiar twinkle in the wizened, dwarfish master's eyes.

Fred, who sat at the desk, ceased poring over a voluminous tome on trans-dimensional physics and glanced furtively toward the empty chair to which Willow seemed to be speaking. "Does your friend have a pipe?" Fred asked.

"No, Garat doesn't have a pipe," Willow sighed. "If he did, I'd be toking up right now."

"A pity you considered it not before you conjured me here," Garat chided, the quills on his chin twitching in bemusement.

Almost simultaneously, Tara stroked her hand and suggested, "Would some tea help? I got the good stuff yesterday. Unless," Tara frowned uncertainly, "unless, that is, you don't like tea any more? I suppose your tastes could have changed in three hundred years."

Once again, Willow's brain felt like a ping-pong ball as conflicting responses tugged at her.

Almost pleading, she defended herself to Garat. "I swear, I didn't do it on purpose. At this point, I don't even know if I would have trusted myself to try. I can't seem to do anything right any more. But if I *had* been trying to conjure you here, you bet I would've thought to throw in a bag of chicum, not to mention the amulet so I could keep trying to figure out what went wrong."

With schizophrenic speed, Willow's demeanor softened as she turned to Tara and murmured, "I still like tea. That might be just what I need right now. I'm pretty tired...it's been a long day, and I didn't think my life could get any weirder."

Wesley and Fred said nothing but exchanged a worried look. To all outward appearances, Willow's behavior did indeed seem schizophrenic.

Tara smiled and rose to go make some tea. However, she nearly collided with Angel, who stood in the doorway. No one had noticed Angel's presence and seeing him suddenly *there* gave Tara a slight start.

"What happened?" Angel asked. His eyes fell upon Willow. "Are you all right?"

Willow's gaze met his and she took in his appearance.

His expression might have been neutral enough to fool anyone. His eyes held just the right degree of concern, his posture was artfully relaxed, yet something she couldn't quite place told Willow that he was suffering deeply. Perhaps it was a level of pain that only a kindred spirit could see, as if written on his face in invisible ink.

Willow saw it. She knew it. She'd felt it.

But she also knew it was the kind of bone-deep misery that didn't want to have to explain itself. At most, it could be shared in a quiet moment. So she merely gestured toward Garat and said, "I've got a visitor from Tahar." She wasn't surprised when Angel's brow furrowed in confusion and, with a sigh, she explained, "Nobody else can see him. But other than that? Yeah, I'm all right."

The room was silent for a moment. Tara sat back down beside Willow and clasped her hand lightly.

"Tahar...was that the one with two suns?" Angel asked.

Relief surged through Willow at Angel's matter-of-fact question. She might have hugged him to death for giving him the benefit of the doubt except that, well...already dead.

"No, that was Upal," Willow answered, beaming with gratitude. "Tahar is where I was a Guardian. I don't know how or why, but my mentor, Garat, is here."

There was another silent moment. As an afterthought, Willow turned to the corner where Garat sat, eyeing the recent arrival curiously, and said, "Garat, this is Angel. He's sort of the head Guardian in this group."

Garat nodded thoughtfully, all the while scrutinizing Angel through narrowed eyes. "This one observes before he speaks," the wizened Tahareen remarked at last.

Willow closed her eyes, shook her head in bemusement and chuckled softly. Turning to Angel, she explained, "Garat approves of you."

Angel's eyes flicked to the seemingly vacant corner. Although his expression remained blank, he nodded and asked, "Do you think this is related to what happened earlier with the spell that transported you out the window?"

Fred gaped at Angel, glancing quickly between him and what to her looked like an empty seat, and blurted, "You can see him?"

In the same instant, Willow choked, "You believe me?"

"No, I can't," Angel answered Fred with a shake of his head. He then spared Willow an encouraging, if tired, smile and assured her, "I don't think you're seeing things, Willow. Trust me. I spent decades around Drusilla. I know a little about the subject, and I don't think this is what's going on with you."

Willow felt a tremor deep inside, a tiny spark of reassurance that was so intense as to be almost painful. She hadn't realized just how heavily everyone's doubts, even her own, had weighed on her until that moment. Her emotions must have played across her face because Tara gave her hand an encouraging squeeze and peered at her with concern.

"Thank you, Angel," Willow whispered, her throat suddenly tight.

He graced her with a half-smile that only briefly warmed his eyes, then turned to Wesley. Reaching into his jacket pocket, Angel withdrew a small object and tossed it at his co-worker.

"I found that in the sewer tunnels beneath the hotel this afternoon."

Wesley fingered what looked like a fragment of cable tipped with a metal point. He frowned. "Fiber optics," he stated bluntly and exchanged a grim look with Angel. "Somebody's watching us. Wolfram and Hart?"

Angel shook his head. "I don't know. They're not the only ones interested in us any more. Take Gunn and see what else you can pull down from the perimeter. No reason to make it easy for them."

Wesley nodded, rose to his feet, and headed toward the door. "Right."

With the shift in dynamics in the room, Willow seized her opportunity to escape. She knew her friends meant well, but she was tired of the interrogation -- not to mention juggling two conversations at once, one of which was with a being from another dimension nobody else could see.

"I think I need a break."

"I'm going to check on Connor."

Willow voiced her desire to take a breather simultaneously as Angel excused himself from the group. Instantly, she felt a bond of empathy with him. For whatever reason, whatever was bothering him, Angel seemed to be feeling as alone and alienated as she did.

At that moment, she decided that it would be nice to be alone together with him for a while.

"Need some company?" Willow asked.

After a brief, thoughtful silence, Angel nodded, but said nothing, merely turning and walking out toward the lobby.

Giving Tara a reassuring squeeze of the hand and seeing the compassionate understanding in her girlfriend's eyes, Willow withdrew from the office and followed after him.