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: 6~


Buffy's eyes remained fixed on Connor. He was a stable point of reference as the rest of her world tilted at Angel's quiet confession. She listened to Connor's soft, steady breathing, which reminded her that she should probably suck in some oxygen herself.

Oh, yeah...

Breathe.

Dazed, Buffy managed to say, "I'm sorry...I thought I heard you say he was your--"

"Son," Angel confirmed, shifting self-consciously from one foot to the other. "I know it sounds--"

"Impossible...I mean...something like this isn't supposed to..." Buffy paused to sort through the confused jumble of her thoughts before locking her gaze on Angel and murmuring, "You told me that vampires couldn't have children."

Angel's voice resonated with the fervor of a repentant sinner as he confessed, "We can't. We shouldn't be able to...I mean, nothing like this has ever happened before, that I know of." As he looked down at Connor, Angel's eyes shone and he whispered, "I can't explain it, short of saying it was a miracle."

A bittersweet pang stabbed at Buffy as she watched Angel gaze lovingly at his son. Suddenly, she felt unbelievably small in the cavernous lobby, yet watching the two of them wrapped her in warmth. She couldn't remember when she'd seen Angel so content, and for the first time since she'd been torn from heaven, she felt happy. As overwhelmed as she was, she was happy for Angel.

However, it didn't stop her from feeling a little jealous that she'd been completely out of the picture for such a momentous turn of events. This changed everything -- it was quite possibly the most important development in Angel's troubled existence.

And she'd missed it.

Mustering her resolve, Buffy asked, "So...how did it happen? I mean, I know you can't explain *how* how, but...who's the, uh, mother?"

Angel froze. He didn't raise his head to look at her.

When several moments passed without a reply, Buffy felt her heart crumble even further, but she steeled herself to do the right thing. After all, she had made it clear to him at their last meeting how much death had changed her, how hard it was for her to feel any of the things she'd felt in what she increasingly saw as her "previous" life.

Even before that, they had both moved on.

And then, there was Spike...

Still, it hurt to think of Angel with someone else. It took every ounce of her willpower to resist the urge to cry or rant, and instead concede diplomatically, "Look, I know this is hard for you -- it's hard for me, too. But I'm really happy for you. It's weird, but I am. If things have developed between you and Cordy, I can deal..."

Angel's head snapped up and he fixed Buffy with a wide-eyed, almost panicked gaze. "Cordy and I aren't...she's not the mother," he explained awkwardly. Once more, he averted his eyes and mumbled something Buffy couldn't quite hear.

"I'm sorry, what?" Buffy prompted, frowning.

Angel swallowed, squared his shoulders and raised his head like a man facing a firing squad.

"Darla was Connor's mother."

It was as if her brain were choking.

Willow grasped desperately at the few, fragile moments of clarity, when she almost recognized the people around her, before her mind slipped sputtering into another reality. She had been lugged around by the oddly unnerving man...

...not a man...he's a...

...he's a...

...he's...dead....

The fair-haired man deposited her on a narrow bed in a room. Not an unfriendly room...it seemed comfortable. No harsh lighting, not too much noise, the floor was soft and fuzzy.

And Tara was here. If there was one thing Willow knew, if there was one piece of reality she could hold onto, it was that this woman who watched her with such gentleness was named Tara, and her presence gave Willow the only peace she'd known in ages.

Then the images started flashing. It was like drowning, only worse. Gasping for air wouldn't help -- Willow was powerless.

The blond man, he has another face.

His voice echoed in her ears as she slipped away, the language almost familiar, yet frustratingly alien.

Many faces, dark room...no, not room -- cave. Cold, hard surface beneath her back, hairs...or...threads? No, a web, silky filaments strong as steel, binding her legs, her arms...he's raising the knife! Please, not this place!

She recoiled with a dreamlike sluggishness and the scene before her wobbled. Colors and light swam at a dizzying rate until resolving themselves into a familiar corridor. Willow vaguely recalled fleeing desperately through this corridor just before she had been bound by the web...on an altar. She had been sacrificed.

No. Executed -- she'd been executed. Exterminated. But it hadn't happened yet.

It was dark, and Willow could hear them coming for her.

For him.

She remembered now. In this reality, she had been Poydras, the Guardian.

She looked down at the powerful, masculine body she inhabited. Willow saw the angry scars and fresh wounds on her muscled arms. Dark green blood oozed like pitch from open gashes and was smeared across lighter green, weathered skin. She felt the weight of Poydras's mentor draped across her back.

Every single detail was just as it had been the first time.

Except...

It was strange -- she could sense everything she had experienced as Poydras, but her perception was skewed, as if she were observing from without.

"Poydras, leave me here," she heard Garat chide over her shoulder, "With my weight slowing you down, the Trackers will catch you for certain. If you leave me, there may yet be a chance for you to escape."

"Two go in, two come out," Poydras growled affectionately, shifting Garat's weight on his back. "You taught me that, old man."

"And you have all the sense of a constipated water fowl for throwing my own words back at me under these circumstances," Garat snapped.

Although she couldn't see the old master's face, Willow knew that reproving tone of voice well, and could picture the sharp quills on his chin bristling as he frowned.

Grimly, she realized how light and frail his body felt. Poydras didn't strain at all to carry him.

"Naturally, given that my mother 'must have been a stubborn she-goat and my father a nearsighted dung beetle'," Poydras chuckled. Willow remembered hearing that good-natured rebuke from Garat during many a training session when Poydras's concentration was off.

"More useless words," Garat grumbled, rapping his knuckles with gruff playfulness on Poydras's head. Then, in a more somber tone, he observed, "The amulet has failed us once already. We must consider the possibility that it is no longer able to cloak us, and that the Trackers have followed our movements."

Willow's mind flooded with fear and it was hard for her to separate her own sense of foreboding from Poydras's. With every fiber of her being, she struggled to warn him. But she was mute.

"It can't have failed," Poydras asserted, clutching with one hand at the obsidian amulet that hung from his neck. "It's impossible. The amulets were given to us by the Makers -- no power of this world can disarm them."

No power of this world.

The phrase echoed with ominous portent as Willow came to a terrible realization.

Her presence was to blame. She didn't belong here -- somehow, she'd trespassed and brought with her...she'd brought...

But when she concentrated on what it was about her that could have nullified the amulet's powers, Willow was wracked with a jolt of mind-numbing panic. Something about the memory that lurked just beyond her reach made her jerk back as if from a fire.

At that very moment, Garat voiced words she remembered with dread.

"Poydras, hold. Did you hear that?"

Run! she tried to scream, even as she felt Poydras go completely still, his Guardian senses alert.

There was a slight waver in the rank, clammy air of the tunnel, so faint it might have been caused by a moth's wings. Nothing disturbed the dim light given off by luminescent mineral seams in the rocky walls.

Then, without warning, one of the shadows lengthened. Before Poydras could whirl around to face the threat, Garat's weight was wrenched from his back. An agonizing scream told Willow that, as before, a Tracker had just slaughtered the old master.

"No!" Poydras shouted.

His anguish tore through her, and her mind flailed helplessly as the scene shifted once more. She sank into darkness, then emerged briefly to find herself back on the stone altar.

Through the eyes of Poydras, broken and defeated, Willow gazed at the cruel face of the Tracker who held aloft a ritual knife.

As the blade plunged into Poydras's chest, gouging through his flesh in a searing explosion of pain, Willow lost her grip on this reality and slipped into a confused wash of sound and shadows.

Spike set Willow down on the twin bed that had been made up for her in a rather spartan room on the second floor. A cursory glance around at the bare walls and purely utilitarian desk, chair, and lamp had him comparing his crypt favorably with the witch's new accommodations. Smugly, he half-grinned to himself. The Poof might have holed up in a posh old hotel, but he was still a penitent monk at heart.

His grin vanished when he turned and came face-to-face with a stern, scowling Cordelia.

"Well, now that Willow's settled: You -- Get. Out."

Spike stared at her, unimpressed. "Gladly. But not 'til the gang's all ready. Like it or not, I'm part of the team, Girl Friday."

"Gunn, you still up for a little target practice with the cross-bow?" Cordelia asked coolly, her eyes never leaving Spike's.

"I'm always ready to work on my aim," Gunn affirmed smoothly, fixing Spike with a lethal stare. "Although it's pretty much dead-on, with all the vamps we been killin' lately."

Inwardly, Spike wondered if he hadn't just felt his stomach churn at the overload of testosterone in the room -- most of it coming off the snippy little brunette in front of him.

Meanwhile, Xander took the opportunity to play referee. Raising his hands, palms forward, he stepped forward and said in soothing tones, "Easy, Cordy, it's okay. Spike *is* part of the team. He's been helping us out...and I can't believe I just defended Spike to my ex-girlfriend. Okay, my nightmare is now complete."

Rolling his eyes in disgust, Spike muttered, "Thanks a lot."

"Shut up," Cordelia snapped at him, before turning to Xander and demanding, "What the hell has been happening in Sunnydale? It isn't weird enough that Little Miss Goody-Two-Shoes turned out to be just another Hellmouth-spawned psycho -- now you're telling me that Spike is one of the good guys? Xander, do you have any idea what he did to Angel the last time he was here?"

Xander's jaw clenched grimly and he jabbed his finger angrily at Cordelia.

"First of all, lay off Willow. You have no right," Xander spat with barely restrained fury. Relaxing his stance slightly, he added, "Besides, Spike can't hurt humans anymore. Some commandos put a chip in his head."

A sinister gleam danced in Cordelia's eyes. Resting her hands on her hips, she looked Spike up and down. "Oh, really?"

Suddenly, with brutal force Cordelia slammed her knee into Spike's groin. Cursing loudly, Spike vamped out, doubled over and dropped to the floor, clutching his privates. Instinctively, Xander, Gunn and Wesley cringed.

"Huh," Cordy remarked, grinning broadly. "Well, what do you know?"

Fred, who had shrunk meekly into the background during the confrontation, twisted a strand of hair around her index finger and cautioned nervously, "Cordelia, do you think it's a good idea to antagonize him? I mean, microchip technology has improved a lot since I was away, but it's still not failsafe. After all, depending on the design, you have to worry about degradation of the circuits, not to mention that a strong electro-magnetic field could--"

"You just moved yourself to the top of the list when I get this thing out," Spike snarled, his demon-gold eyes shooting daggers at Cordelia.

Before the situation worsened, Wesley diffused the tension by shifting the focus to Willow. "Look, hadn't we better concentrate on what has reduced Ms. Rosenberg to such a state? I have a fair idea of what she's been experimenting with, but I'm not sure why the attempt to contain her power has affected her this way."

"Sh-she'd gotten p-pretty strong by the time we confronted her," Tara piped up. "Her skills were so advanced that she started t-trying to tap into other dimensions."

Wesley nodded, narrowing his eyes. "As I thought. Trans-dimensional exploration would explain the reaction in the Ptersian spheres that Buffy described. Given that *four* spheres are involved, there's no telling how many she's traversed. Do you know if she was drawing energy from another dimension when you fought her?"

"How could we tell?" Tara asked, glancing uncertainly at Xander, who shook his head and shrugged.

Pursing his lips, Wesley struggled to clarify. "Well...did her magic seem to have a greater depth, or was it...er...did it have an odd resonance to it?"

Spike winced as he rose to his feet and brushed himself off. "Red was definitely darker, that last fight. Could feel the power comin' off her in waves. Stung like needles." With a sharp glance at Cordelia, he added, "Gave me a real thirst for blood."

A scathing retort was poised on Cordelia's lips when, abruptly, she halted and her eyes widened. She glanced at her watch and sighed, "Uh oh. Ten-thirty. Time for Connor's bottle."

Turning on her heel, Cordelia left without another word. Xander stared uneasily after her, then looked from Wesley, to Gunn, to Fred, and back to Wesley. Angel's associates glanced awkwardly at each other, then dropped their gazes to the floor.

"For a mother hen, she's a bloody bitch," Spike muttered. He stalked over to the desk chair, fished through his pockets for his flask, plopped down, uncapped it and took a deep swig.

Jamming his hands into his pockets, Xander rocked back slightly on his heels and ducked his head questioningly toward Wesley. "So, since we're on the subject, uh, what's up with Junior Demon Hunter downstairs? What is he -- Scrappy Doo in your Scooby Gang?"

Wesley grimaced, nibbled on his thumbnail, then gestured absently as he fumbled for words. "Well, you see...he's...ah...he's..."

Spike lazily stretched out his legs, folded his arms across his chest and observed the ex-Watcher's discomfort with amusement. Finally, he snorted impatiently, "Spill already."

"It's just that...it really isn't our place to tell," Wesley protested weakly.

Spike's countenance fell as Wesley's odd behavior shed light on the faint but curiously familiar scent he'd picked up from the child.

No, it had to be wrong. It was impossible.

Narrowing his eyes, Spike stared unflinchingly at Wesley and whispered in utter disbelief, "He's the Poof's, isn't he?"

Wesley quickly averted his eyes, but the abrupt increase in his heart rate gave Spike his answer.

"Bloody hell."

Buffy was unable to disguise the betrayal in her eyes. "Darla? As in...Darla??!!??"

"I'm not proud of what I did," Angel interjected hastily. "It was a bad time. I'd lost faith. I was numb and just wanted to feel...something... and then she was just there..."

"And you turned to her?" Buffy murmured numbly, her face frozen in a horrified grimace. "You slept with her without a single thought about the consequences?"

"Connor isn't a consequence!" Angel retorted vehemently, before his eyes took on a distant, sorrowful gleam. "He's the one good thing Darla and I ever did together."

Buffy cocked her head reprovingly and lifted her eyebrows. "I meant your soul."

Angel looked suitably chagrined and stepped hesitantly toward Buffy, entreating her with the sorrowful eyes of a lover fallen from grace. "I've only known perfect happiness with one woman. I wasn't looking for it with Darla when we..." He paused and his brow furrowed slightly. In a soft, halting voice he continued, "Darla couldn't give me perfect happiness, not...like that." Shaking his head, he chuckled, "But I've found it in Connor. I don't know why I still have my soul."

A battle raged within Buffy between despair at the thought that Darla shared something with Angel that Buffy had only dreamed of, and a bitter, reluctant acknowledgment that, somehow, this was meant to be. It shouldn't have been possible, yet there Connor slept, innocent and fragile in his father's embrace.

Although she hadn't even begun to sort through her emotions, Buffy found herself asking, "Can I hold him?"

Angel's eyes beamed with pride. Shifting Connor slightly, he passed his son to Buffy. Placing his hands over hers, Angel gently showed her how to support Connor's head and cradle his tiny form close to her chest.

A breath hitched in her throat as Buffy felt the warm, salty sting of tears in her eyes. "He's beautiful. He looks just like you."

"Cordy thinks he's got my eyes," Angel murmured, gazing warmly at Connor. Then he drew up and added soberly, "But he doesn't have my fangs. We don't know how or why, but he's human."

Buffy raised her head and stared incredulously at Angel. "And Darla accepts this?"

"She's..." Angel began, then stopped. After a few moments, he explained brokenly, "The delivery was difficult. Vampire physiology isn't designed to give birth. Darla staked herself...so Connor could live."

Buffy had thought that nothing else could shock her that evening, but once again she found herself reeling. When she found her voice, she stammered, "Angel, I'm so...I'm...God, I don't know what to say."

"There's nothing to say. Darla surprised me. I wish she could have seen him," Angel confessed.

Connor squirmed in Buffy's arms and screwed up his face, on the verge of awakening. His breathing was punctuated by cranky whimpers. Angel reached for him and said, "Buffy, I can't justify what I did, and I'm sorry I hurt you. But I do not, will not ever, regret that it brought me my son."

As Buffy passed the child to his father, Connor began to fuss, releasing impatient gasps and irritated whines.

"Is he okay?" Buffy asked.

"He's just hungry," Angel explained, draping Connor against his shoulder and patting him reassuringly. "He's on a three-hour cycle, and it's been about that long since his last feeding."

Just as Connor began to wail in distress, Cordelia appeared at the top of the staircase and descended toward Angel and Buffy.

"Aww, somebody's hungry. Ten-thirty, right on schedule," she cooed, reaching out to take Connor from Angel. Buffy was startled by the familiarity with which Cordy handled Angel's son -- not to mention the fact that Angel relinquished Connor to her with scarcely a blink. As Cordelia carried Connor toward the office, she observed over her shoulder, "We've got Willow settled in. You two should go up and check in with Wesley. From what he says, Fred's little adventure in Pylea was a vacation at Club Med compared to what Willow's gotten herself into."




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