Judgement

Rogue Demon Hunter

Sam Perlo-Freeman

This story is set about a month after the end of Season 6 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters and setting in this story, which are the creation of Joss Whedon. I am merely borrowing them.

Thanks to Rachel Powell for beta-ing the story and for her comments and suggestions.

“Hypocrite! A monumental bloody hypocrite, that’s what you are, Rupert Giles!”

The Watcher sat deep in thought as the plane sped eastwards across the Atlantic. Next to him, Willow was also absorbed in troubled reflections. They’d run out of conversation somewhere over the Eastern Seaboard.

Giles was accompanying Willow to England to face justice before the Oakhampton Coven, the powerful band of Wicca that had alerted him to her near-apocalyptic turn to darkness a month previously. No regular court was competent to deal with Willow’s case so she would be tried by a jury of her peers for Warren’s murder and her abuse of dark magic.

Actions must have consequences. Crimes cannot go unpunished. Willow had accepted that she must face up to what she had done and pay whatever price was deemed appropriate.

Unlike Giles.

None of them knew that he’d killed Ben. He’d never told them, and in the trauma of Buffy’s death, they’d never thought to wonder how it had ended. Dawn was alive, Buffy was dead. Glory was gone, and the world hadn’t ended. It was The Night Buffy Died. Or, perhaps, When Buffy Killed Glory. Giles’ role remained his secret. Whether he kept it to protect them, or himself, or just to keep things simple, Giles didn’t know. It didn’t greatly trouble him. Usually. He was a pragmatist. He’d done what he had to. He would do the same again in the same circumstances. Ben’s face, eyes bulging, his last stifled attempts to scream, had never once invaded Giles’ sleep. Just now though, the irony of it all weighed heavily upon him. A murderer escorting another murderer to face a reckoning to which he himself would never submit.

“Giles?”

“Willow?” He started from his reverie and turned to face the redhead, giving her his full attention. “What is it?”

“Er, I need to get out.”

“Oh, yes of course.” Giles got out of his seat to let her past. She went to the back of the plane into the toilet, and locked the door behind her. She sat down, face in hands, as hard, silent sobs shook her body. She fought back the urge to vomit..

Was this how it was for Angel, she wondered? This awful, gut-wrenching, guilt, every minute of every day? For the past hundred years or so? Guilt, over what she’d done to Warren, to Rack - the fact that she was a murderer. Nearly destroying the world oddly didn’t seem so bad. Worse, what she’d tried to do to her friends, the things she’d said, the things she’d felt! Where had that come from, that rage, that hate? Grief at what had happened to Tara, sure, but this went way beyond that. Was that who she’d been all along, the real Willow, just waiting for the right opportunity to come to the surface? Was that who she still was? Was the remorse, this determination to face justice, just another show, to make her friends accept and forgive her? Was that all she was, a petty, jealous, angry, insecure, pathetic little girl putting on a nice smile and..

Stop it, Willow.

She’d been round this loop way too many times. She thought of Xander. She pictured his face, his smile, his voice, his laugh. Wonderful Xander. He was all that had kept her going, pulled her back from the depths of despair again and again, just the thought of him, like now. He could bring her back to herself, allow her to believe that there might be light at the end of the tunnel. Buffy and Giles had been wonderful, she could scarcely understand how they forgave her so easily. She loved them dearly - but it was Xander who kept her alive.

Her feelings for Xander no longer had a romantic aspect, the childhood crush she’d had for too many years. After Tara’s death, she wasn’t going anywhere near romance for a good long time. In truth, she could barely think about Tara, it hurt too much. Her grief and loss were too mixed up with the sense of shame at how she had responded to Tara’s death, of how Tara would look upon the revenge Willow had taken in her name. She had not even been able to attend the funeral - Tara’s birth family had reclaimed the body while Willow had lain feverish in bed with the backwash of the monumental sorceries she had wrought.

‘Guess I’d better get back to my seat, or they’ll be sending search parties’, she said to herself. She washed her face before leaving, and slipped absently past Giles.

***

Xander sighed, and flicked the remote, switching off the TV. Mind-numbing rubbish. Why did he watch that stuff? He was bored. Willow and Giles had flown off to England, Buffy had taken Dawn on a road trip, Anya hadn’t quite got back to the speaking to him stage and the vamps were quiet He’d have even quite liked to have Spike around - ‘Merciful Zeus, did I really just think that?’ Someone to trade insults with at least. Why is there never a Cordelia Chase around when you need one?

The flat, seemed empty. Willow had moved in last month after … what happened. Her abuse of dark magick had caused severe damage to her system. She collapsed soon after pulling back from her apocalypse attempt, and had been dangerously ill for over a week. She had a heavy fever, and drifted in and out of consciousness. She was delirious at times, frequently crying out. How much it was magical comedown, how much was guilt at what she’d done, Xander didn’t know, and nor did people more likely to know things, like Giles.

Willow had gradually recovered her strength and coherence, and when she had done so she had been quick to insist that she should give herself up to the police. Buffy wouldn’t hear of it.

“Willow, I can’t let that happen. I can’t let them put you in jail for the rest of your life, maybe worse… I can’t lose you. Not again. What you did was wrong, you know that, we all do. But you weren’t in control - you were addicted to magic, and there’s no way a court could understand that”, she’d said.

“Buffy, I don’t want to go to jail any more than you want me to - but I can’t just go on as if nothing had happened - I can’t just get away with murder. Besides it’s not that…”

“Willow, it’s very courageous of you to want to give yourself up,” Giles interrupted, “but Buffy has a point. You were under the influence of very powerful forces and - “

“That’s not an excuse!”

“I’m not saying it is, but it’s a factor. A court of law must always consider every mitigating factor. I’m afraid the normal legal system just isn’t competent to try a case such as yours. And besides, what would you actually tell them? There’s no body, and they’ll hardly believe that you killed Warren and disposed of the body without so much as a trace, on your own. Awkward questions would be asked, and who knows where that would lead.”

“I know exactly where it would lead,” said Xander. “Me and Buffy reported what happened to the police. Warren shot Buffy. She’s got a bit of a history with Sunnydale’s finest, and so if they know Willow killed him, they won’t exactly have far to look for an accomplice. We were even there when it happened. I don’t like to say this Willow, but there’s a two and two adding up far too close to five for my liking if we go down that road.”

Willow looked deflated. “God, I’m not gonna do anything that could get you guys in trouble, I mean I’ve done plenty of that already, but are you saying I should just - and I mean, Warren must have a family, they still think he’s a fugitive - don’t they deserve to know…?”

“Yes, well maybe you should have thought of that before you killed him.” snapped Giles. “I’m sorry. Look, this isn’t, rather superfluous to say, an ideal situation. But there is an alternative…”

That was when Giles had outlined his suggestion that she could face trial by the Coven, which she’d readily agreed to. That evening, back at the flat, Willow had turned to Xander and said:

“Buffy’s been so good this past week or so - but she talks as if she thinks it wasn’t really me back there. Like I kinda lost my soul and turned into Wilgelus, and now I’ve got my soul back and I’m Willow again. But it’s not like that. It was me back then. It’s still me, or, I’m still me, if you know what I mean. That’s what’s so hard.”

Xander had just said, “I know, Willow, I know,” and held her.

The Coven had agreed to Giles’ suggestion, and had set the Midsummer Solstice for the hearing. The past few weeks had been spent preparing. Xander had emailed his account of everything that had happened, and answered a lot of questions. He wasn’t entirely happy about the whole thing. Sure, they sounded like good people and they’d helped save Willow with whatever “essence of magic” thing they’d planted in her through Giles - but they were powerful, and an unknown quantity, and this was not exactly a regular trial with all the usual rules. More like a sort of court martial, he thought, and that wasn’t the most comforting of thoughts.

He turned the TV back on.

***

“Well, I suppose I should say welcome to England Willow, though I wish it were under rather happier circumstances.”

“Maybe sometime you can give me the proper tour.” She paused. “That is, when I get out. If I get out.”

They talked quietly as they made their way through arrivals at Heathrow. It was already evening in Britain, and they would be going straight to Giles’ flat in Bath that night before continuing to the Wiccans’ community house in Okehampton for the hearing the following day.

“I don’t know that they’re going to put you in anything, Willow. The-their philosophy is more one of … er … restorative rather than retributive justice. That is to say, …”

“Making amends.”

“Er, yes, more or less.”

“Good! ‘Cause I’m right with the making amends. I’m all amendy.” She paused. “So, like they don’t have the death penalty or anything…?”. Funnily enough she’d never thought to ask that before. She’d been so much caught up with the idea of facing judgement, the witches’ judgement on her, on who or what she was, that she hadn’t given much thought to the actual consequences.

“No, of course not, Willow. I…I mean even if they would wish to, which I am sure they wouldn’t, they are still subject to the laws of the land. Applying the death penalty would make them…”

“Murderers.”

Giles and Willow looked at each other for a moment and fell silent.

***

The skies boiled. Strange, bright, mystical energies flashed above. Cracks opened in the heavens, revealing a bright orange glow.

“She could never kill a human being. She’s a real hero. She’s not like us.”

“Us?”

“Like you and me.”

Giles bent down, knelt on Ben’s chest and placed his hand over his nose and mouth and pressed hard. He watched Ben’s eyes popping, his face changing colour, felt his stifled attempts to scream…

“Hey Giles! I’m going to the fairground! Can you come with me?”

Buffy was wearing a long white dress. Her face was radiant.

“I-I’ll be with you in a minute, Buffy. Once I’ve finished killing Ben for you.”

She pouted.

“Hardly setting an example, Ripper old boy!”

Spike was holding Buffy’s hand. He was dressed in a bright pin-striped suit. Giles dimly heard a scream.

“I’ll be needing a good strong father figure, what with the shoes just back from the repair shop n’all,” Spike continued.

Giles stuttered, searching for an answer. The scream, though stifled, was getting louder, or at least more piercing. It was a high pitched female voice. He looked around, then realised it was from below him. He looked down. He beheld Willow’s purple, lifeless features etched in terror beneath his hand.

He awoke with a start and a cry, and sat up in bed, breathing heavily. He was covered in sweat. A dream. It was just a dream. He got up, turned on the light and walked round his flat, trying to dispel the horror from his mind, but it seemed as though the nightmare had lodged itself deep in his gut. He went to the kitchen, and took a glass of water, then switched the kettle on.

He thought better of this, switched off the kettle and poured himself a generous dram from the bottle of malt whisky in his drinks cabinet. As he sat and sipped the fiery liquid, his calm returned as the disturbing images from his dream slipped gradually back into his subconscious.

Now what on earth was that thing about Spike’s shoes? Where did that come from?

***