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.

“Well. Here it is. Said I’d get you there! Niagara Falls!”

Dawn giggled and slightly and drew in a breath.

“It’s certainly something! Wow! I mean, wow!”

The two sisters stood in silence for a while and took in the sight, letting the water’s roar rush over them, its spray blasting them with cool, crisp relief from the hot midsummer sun, their hair flying ragged in the wind. They had been travelling for two weeks now. It had been hard for Buffy to leave Willow behind with things so up in the air, but things had been getting increasingly awkward with Buffy spending so much time over at Xander and Willow’s, and Dawn’s attitude to Willow. So now had seemed a good time to fulfil Buffy’s promise of showing her sister the world. Or at least America for now.

“Did you know that the great tightrope walker Blondin once walked across Niagara Falls?” asked Dawn, in the enthusiastic way of a child imparting recently acquired knowledge. “And there were like huge crowds cheering him and calling his name, and then when he got to the other side, he said to them - he said he was gonna walk back across, but this time carrying a man on his back, and he said ‘do you believe that I can do this’, and they were all like, ‘yes, we believe you, we believe you’, and then he said ‘Which one of you will be that man?’ and they all fell silent? And then one guy volunteered, and Blondin did it! He carried him across the tightrope!”

“Sounds cool. Wanna give it a try? I’m sure we could find some ropes, tie them together,…”

“No, no… I didn’t mean…”

“Kidding.” Buffy smiled. “Don’t worry. Not in a hurry to test my Slayer co-ordination quite that far!”

“But you see the point of the story is, they all said they believed him, but when it came to it, only one of them really believed in him enough to let him carry him!”

“Certainly full marks for believiness!”

They fell silent again, and gently wandered round the parklands overlooking the Falls. Eventually Dawn spoke. Her voice carried an edge.

“Willow’s trial’s today.”

Buffy sighed. “Yeah. Today. They’ll be well into it by now, time difference and all. Xander said she’d call him, and he’d fill me in.”

“What do you think they’ll do to her?”

“I don’t know, Dawn. I .. I just want it to be over, want her to be back with us - I know there has to be a price…”

“For killing Warren? For trying to kill me? And Xander and those other two guys? Oh, and yeah, trying to destroy the world? What’s the price for that?”

“Dawn, do we have to talk about this now? I mean..”

Dawn relented. “I’m sorry. I .. I just know you’re thinking about it, and … so that made me think about it and…”

“Dawn, I know it’s hard for you. It’s been hard for all of us … but you have to try to understand - that wasn’t Willow you saw there, Willow wasn’t in there, she said so herself, she’d been taken over…Willow - the real Willow - she’d never have said those things she said to you.”

“So who was it in there? Some kinda demon? Sure she was taken over by the magic - her magic. No-one made her say those things, do those things - she meant it.”

Buffy paused.

“Maybe a part of her did, but there was another part of her that didn’t. Xander - Xander reached her, reached the Willow that we know … when you care about someone, you have to keep on trying to reach that part of them … reach the good in them, you have to believe that that can defeat the evil - you can’t just give up.”

“Like with Faith.”

Buffy bristled.

“Faith was different!”

“How?”

Buffy paused, sighed, and smiled again.

“OK, maybe it’s me that’s different. I guess … I’ve been through so much. I lost mom, I nearly lost you, I nearly lost myself. I’ve seen what I’m capable of, what I could sink to… and - losing Willow is just not something I can think about. I know what she’s done. But when I see her now I can’t feel anger, I’m just so grateful that she’s back. Dawn, there’s not a day goes by when I don’t thank God … or the Powers That Be .. or who or whatever is looking out for us out there - that she came back. Can you understand that?”

Buffy looked her sister in the eye. Dawn looked down, then returned her gaze, then, giving no other answer, opened her arms and held Buffy tightly to her. They maintained their silent embrace for some while.

***

Willow walked through the fire.

Before the attentive witches, she retold and relived the events of the previous month. Punctuated by occasional questions from Dragonwind and the other two, she led them through everything that had happened those awful two days. From when … from the shooting - her attempt to appeal to Osiris, her healing of Buffy, her relentless pursuit, torture and killing of Warren, and all the rest. She entered once again into the pain that in that one moment became her world, her universe. Nothing else had existed. It was all-encompassing and voracious, and sought only to draw others into its endless black depths. Warren. Jonathon and Andrew. Her friends. The world. Until finally Xander, aided by the ‘essence of magic’ the Coven had placed within her through Giles, had broken through that pain and brought her back to the world of colour, of light, of love beyond it. She relived every moment of it. At times she wasn’t even aware of what she was saying. Her consciousness swam through the stormy darkness of that time. Her words seem to come from a different time, a different dimension. She sensed the Wiccans were picking up more than her words, that her spirit was speaking directly to theirs, enhanced by the energy of the circle and the power of the solstice sun. She held back nothing, she knew that, sparing neither them nor herself.

As her story reached its conclusion, she collapsed to the ground, drained and wrecked, breathing great heaving sobs. Giles came to her and held her. Dragonwind also rose from her seat and came to her, extending her hand.

“You have spoken bravely and truthfully, Willow,” her mellifluous voice flowed, “Rise now, get some rest and something to eat. We will continue when you are ready.” It was noon, and the sun shone bright and warm in the clear blue sky.

***

"Willow, we've basically heard everything we need to about what happened last month, but we need a bit more background about you and magick, if we're to properly understand what's going on here and what needs to be done. You're probably the most powerful witch any of us have met, and that includes any of us, on our own at least. So could you tell us how you started getting into Wicca and using magick, and how it developed up to the present? Is that OK?"

They had resumed after a couple of hours’ break. It was Forest who spoke this time. He had what Willow took to be a cockney accent or something like, and spoke in an easier, less formal manner than Dragonwind.

"Well, it was a little over five years ago - the first spell I did was to uninvite a vampire from Buffy's house - it was her ex-boyfriend who'd turned evil."

"Angel, the vampire with a soul?" asked Shannon, "we've heard of him"

"Well at that time he was very much Angelus, the vampire without a soul, but yes. And after that I started learning stuff, then the first big spell I did was to rework the curse that gave Angel his soul back. Though … it was like it wasn't me casting it, I started the ritual, but then the ritual sort of took over - it was performing me, rather than the other way round if you see what I mean."

"Can happen with that sort of powerful stuff", said Forest.

"Then I really started getting into the whole Wiccan thing, I read stuff, I think I even looked up some of what you guys have written on the web, I started doing some basic blessings, keeping a Book of Shadows, you know."

"Did you join a coven?"

"No… I was a solitary … I guess I was just too involved in what was going on with the Scoo- with Buffy and the others that I didn't think to start getting involved in a coven as well. And everything was happening so fast living on the Hellmouth - things were life and death pretty much on a weekly basis. When I thought about magick, it was mostly about which spells might keep us alive or save the world, I suppose I didn't think about the more spiritual kinda stuff. Maybe if I had…"

"Anyway, things sort of bumped along magickwise for me for a while, there was some good stuff, like I learnt to float pencils and even staked a vamp with one, but … I kinda plateaud, there were a few spells that went wrong…"

"Tell us about that?" interrupted Dragonwind.

"Oh - yeah, well when we were lost in this house that was possessed by a fear demon, I tried to conjure a mystic guide, but … I couldn't make up my mind what I wanted from it, and so they sorta multiplied, and there were dozens of them all buzzin' around me… so there was that, and then when my boyfriend left me I tried to cast a will-be-done spell to make the pain go away…"

"Mug's spell," said Forest, "promises the world, impossible to control. Even for an expert. Thank the Goddess."

"Yeah, I kinda realised that afterwards… but the magick started to take off when … when I…"

At this point Willow started to trail off. The three 'judges' said nothing, but gestured for her to continue.

"When I met Tara."

She struggled to maintain composure in her voice. She breathed heavily, and continued.

"She … she was everything to me - in my life, and in my magick - she knew so much more than me, and she understood magick so much more - but she said I had power, and she brought it out of me … Oh God!" Her voice cracked, but she continued through her sobs.

"She saw the magick in me - in every sense - and .. she brought it to life - and God, if she hadn't, she'd still be alive now and none of this…"

Giles moved over to Willow again.

"Willow, whatever else has happened, you can't blame yourself for her death."

Willow took some deep sobbing breaths and gradually composed herself to continue.

"We did a lot of spells together - like when Faith, the rogue Slayer, swapped bodies with Buffy, we did a spell to find her spirit in the netherworld, so she could swap them back…"

She continued her history, over the following months and years, holding nothing back. The only time she seemed to shock them was when she described the ritual of Osiris that had brought Buffy back from the dead.

"Bloody hell!" exclaimed Forest, "You used the Urn of Osiris? And it worked? And you lived?"

"We have read of the ritual, " said Dragonwind, "but we had assumed the power involved to be too great for a mortal to bear. It is a dark and dangerous magick, and whoever uses it cannot but be changed by it, and not for the better. It is little wonder you followed the path you did after that." They looked at Willow with a new respect, a degree of awe even, and not a little fear.

She told them of the most painful things, the forgetting spell she’d performed on Tara and their resulting split. Then she told of her descent into addiction.

"It was my friend Amy who showed me that side of things - I'd not realised that magick could be used like that, to get a rush - like a drug"

"Yeah, if you're into that sort of thing. I prefer hash myself. Sorry, go on."

Willow was about to feel shocked by Forest's remark, then realised moral outrage was a little out of place here.

"At the time, I mean things got bad, and I hurt people I cared about - but at the time it almost helped in a way, made me see what was happening. I mean, I'd been misusing magick for a while, but when I realised I was addicted, that I was using it as a drug, that it made the issues much clearer. I’d always been very clear I’d never get into that. Just say no. I guess I needed to have a big anvil dropped on my head like that to realise I needed help."

"So, I crashed a car under the influence - with Dawn in it … she was OK, but after that I went cold turkey, and I didn't use magic again until…"

Until.

***