The Trial of Willow Rosenberg
Parts 3 & 4

By Sam James

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"Now son," Judge Bone said in his gruff way. "I'm not going to ask what lunatic asylum you found these people who believe they are thousand year-old demons and supernatural vampire slayers."

Carlos looked down at his feet.

"I'm not even gonna ask you what kind of cockamainy job of preparation you did that you didn't even find out that two of your witness were completely insane."

Carlos had wondered that himself. He mentally reviewed the questioning he had done. Both Buffy "The Vampire Slayer" Summers and Anya "Vengeance Demon" Jenkins had seemed totally normal. Buffy had seemed a bit guilty about turning in her friend but seemed motivated by a strong belief in truth and justice while Anya sympathized with Willow but seemed somewhat scared of her. There was nothing to indicate that both would break down on the stand like that.

Judge Bone continued. "Ironically enough, the only reason why you have a the opportunity to make your case is that your opponent keeps getting your errors taken off the record."

Carlos reddened. "Sir I..."

The judge interrupted him. "I'll give you one more chance. If you can produce a witness who doesn't say he's a werewolf, robot, ghost, or some other monster, you may be able to make a case. If not, I'll suggest that Miss Rosenberg request that the case be dismissed for failure to present any evidence." Judge Bone frowned. "Now get out!"

'This has to be a set-up of some sort,' Carlos thought as he walked back to his office. 'The two girls are friends of the murderer. So they pretended to be witnesses for the state so they could sabotage their own testimony, make me look like an idiot, and then let Willow walk free.' So deep in thought was he that he failed to notice the pretty female lawyer who was now walking beside him.

"So how does it feel to be beaten by a girl?" Lilah Morgan asked the prosecutor. "A girl still in college, just a kid."

"Go away," growled Carlos.

"It really is quite amusing," Lilah ignored him. "She's been running the show since the jury selection and you still don't have a clue what is going on."

"Oh, I figured it out," the prosecutor said stopping in his tracks. "I'll have perjury charges drawn up on the two of them and I'll prove they were faking..."

His rant was interrupted by Lilah's laugh. "You don't understand a thing you numbskull. Every word in that courtroom was true. Buffy is a vampire slayer and a very dangerous one. Anya is a vengeance demon. I ought to know considering what she did to my first fiancée. And Willow is a powerful witch who killed Warren Means with magic."

"You've gone insane," Carlos said flatly. "I should have known when you said Wolfram and Hart would represent someone for free."

Lilah laughed again. "Flattery will get you nowhere." She reached into her handbag and took out a clear ball of solid crystal. "Take a look for yourself." She held the ball on her palm and said "Activos"

Before the prosecutor's startled eyes the ball began to glow and then filled with a picture like a TV set. He saw the chase with Warren pursued by a black-haired and black-eyed Willow Rosenberg. He saw the man grabbed by the vegetation, tortured with his own bullet, and then stripped of his skin at a single word.

"My God," he said. The image wavered as the lawyer shuddered. "It's real. All of this is true."

"Congratulations," said Lilah. "Welcome to the real world."

Carlos' hand grabbed the ball. "This is vital evidence in a murder case. I am seizing in accordance to state law."

"Oh, come on Carlos," Lilah yawned. "My law degree didn't come out of a Cracker Jack box. That's the property of Wolfram and Hart, a law firm representing several clients currently being charged by your office. You can't touch it. Besides, you don't have a clue how to operate it."

Reluctantly, Carlos surrendered the crystal ball. "So what's your angle? The girl doesn't want you as her lawyer. Why are you still here?"

Lilah moved up against the man, moving her face close enough to kiss. "We still want to represent her. We have reason to want her to owe us... favors. If she doesn't want us now-and from what I've seen so far she has no reason to think she needs us -she may be more cooperative on appeal after she's lost here."

Lilah looked into her opposite number's eyes and saw cold calculation. She gave a tight smile of victory. "Here's the deal. Wolfram and Hart provides what you need to win here. We'll bribe a few policemen, plant some evidence. It won't take much since Witchy Willow fortunately has given you a clean slate. You'll be spared the ignobility of losing to a kid. Then, if the witch hires us, you go down on appeal but to the best law firm in the state."

Carlos Columbia's head whirled. Magic was real. The murderess really was a witch, and now a law firm was offering to help him take her down. "And what do you get out of all this? What does she have that makes her so special that you want favors?"

Lilah smiled again. He was hooked, no question about it. Amused, Lilah answered truthfully, knowing it would be meaningless to him. "What does she have? Why, the soul of an angel."

Carlos Columbia, state attorney, looked at his witness, idly wondering if the extra weight of the construction worker was fat or muscle. "I'm sure Ms. Summers and Ms. Jenkins told you about their testimony yesterday."

Xander smiled. "I told Willow to watch some Perry Mason. Apparently it works in real life too."

Carlos glared at him. "In case you haven't noticed, you and Miss Rosenberg are playing on opposite teams here, Mr. Harris. If you cannot put your sympathies for the murderess aside, I will follow my better judgment and withdraw you from the witness list."

"My sympathy for Willow is the only reason I'm here," Xander said. "Warren killed Tara and almost got Buffy. He deserved to go down but legally, through the police. Not like this. Now Willow needs to know that there are consequences so she won't go all Dirty Harry Superwitch the next time something goes wrong."

"Thank you, Mr. Harris. But it's my job to make the speeches. Now, in light of yesterday's disclosures I have done some research and so have some unusual questions for you. For starters, you do believe yourself to be a normal human, not a slayer, demon, witch, vampire, robot or any other unusual being, correct?"

It was 7 AM when Xander entered the lawyer's office and 10 AM when he took the stand to the bailiff's "First witness, again," the last word given in an annoyed sigh. In the meantime, the young man reluctantly filled the prosecutor in on a tale that simply defied belief. Apparently this group of friends had saved the world many times from whatever the plural of apocalypse was. They had fought against vampires, ghosts, demons, robots, and even a god.

"You can't say that in front of the jury," Carlos was aghast.

"Don't I have to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?" asked Xander.

The lawyer hesitated. "As an officer of the court I cannot tell you to lie and have to turn you in if I suspect you are." His deal with Lilah was very carefully vague enough to shield him on that score. "But from what you tell me you actually know very little about how this magic stuff is done. You'll be just as much telling the truth if you simply admit you don't know."

"Oh," Xander flashed back to his school days. "I'm very good at that."

So Xander took the oath with a clear conscience. But he was surprised at the lawyer's next words. "I wish to declare Mr. Harris a hostile witness."

"Huh?" Willow and Xander said, virtually simultaneously. "Um, I mean I object," Willow continued alone.

"Mr. Columbia, please explain." Judge Bone put in.

The two lawyers approached the bench so the jury would not be able to hear. "Your honor, Mr. Harris is a long-time friend of the defendant since early childhood. While we've conferred, I can say honestly I don't know what he'll say on certain matters." Carlos ignored the judge's muttered, "He better not say he's another creature feature" and continued, "Nonetheless, he is now the only allowable witness to the final confrontation between the defendant and Warren Means. I wish to have him testify only in that limited area."

Judge Bone nodded and turned to Willow. "I don't suppose you know what a hostile witness means?" Willow shook her head. "Well, basically it boils down allowing the lawyer the same privileges a lawyer gets on cross examination so you can't object to leading the witness and such. It also allows the attorney to introduce evidence against his own witness to force testimony and to limit the questioning to a narrow area." Willow thanked the judge and returned to her seat while her opponent stood to confront Xander.

Carlos purposefully kept Xander's testimony brief. Xander testified to seeing Warren shoot Buffy and fire several other shots, to finding Tara dead, and to the confrontation between Willow and Warren. Satisfied that the right points were made he turned the witness over to Willow for her cross examination.

Willow stood up. She gave a smile that showed no mercy for Xander who cringed a bit upon seeing it. "So Xander, since you've sworn to tell the whole truth, tell me." She paused. Carlos was looking anxious. She smiled again, this one of pure mischief. "Tell me where did you hide my Barbie doll when we were six? I never could find it again."

The courtroom erupted in laughter but in the spectator's gallery Lilah Morgan turned to her companion. "Very clever, she's reminding the jury that even longtime friends have their little spats while at the same time they will unconsciously see Xander as an unreliable man who steals little girls' dolls." Her companion simply stroked his grey beard. His eyes, somewhat unfocused, stayed on Willow.

"I think I just threw it on the roof or something," Xander replied.

"Okay. Now in your testimony this morning, you said you saw me instantly remove Warren's skin. How could I do that?"

Xander tensed and recited the answer Carlos had recommend he use if the subject came up. "I don't know. I can honestly say that I know of no way of removing the skin. But you're the one who took AP Chemistry."

Several heads in the jury nodded. Carlos smiled. The girl had won yesterday by using her knowledge of her friends' secrets. Now, under his direction, Xander was using the same against her.

"Remind the court what you do for a living, please."

"I'm a construction worker specializing in carpentry."

"And in that position, don't you have a greater working knowledge of chemicals and explosives than say a college student studying computer science and psychology?"

After Carlos' objection was overruled, Xander said, "I have a very limited knowledge of the common chemicals used on construction sites that cannot compare to the girl who won the Sunnydale science fair two years running." The audience laughed again.

"Okay. What happened next?"

"What?" Xander could not believe Willow would be asking that. She wanted the court to know how she almost destroyed the world? He barely noticed Carlos objecting on the grounds that Xander's testimony had been limited to the killing of Warren and Judge Bone's declaration that the aftermath of the murder was relevant.

He started to explain, "you tried to kill Warren's partners&ldots;" Willow interrupted. "Sorry, Xander, please describe what you saw, not your interpretation of it."

"Buffy told me that&ldots;" Willow interrupted again. "Xander, that's hearsay. Just say what you saw and heard yourself."

"Well, I saw you standing on the top of a truck that hit the car I was driving that had Andrew, Jonathan, and Buffy in it." Willow sighed. "Was I driving that truck?" Xander was forced to admit that she was not.

"Then you were fighting Buffy while Dawn and I took Andrew and Jonathan to hide." Xander continued.

"But did I touch them or use any weapon against them?" Faced with this carefully worded question, Xander could only say no. But there was no way he could mentioning magic to Willow's next question.

"And when was the next time you saw me?"

As Xander told about living through Willow's earthquake and stopping Willow from destroying the world by intercepting her magical beams with his body, saying he still wanted to hang with "scary veiney" Willow, he couldn't help adding. "I'm not sure about hanging with smug lawyer Willow, I do have some standards."

Ignoring the jibe, Willow walked over to the bailiff's table, picked up the Bible used to swear in the witnesses, positioned the book so it could be seen by the jury and said, "So a carpenter saved the world; where have I heard that before."

Xander looked at her. "Beats me. I can't figure out where a nice Jewish girl who wasn't allowed to watch TV Christmas specials could have heard that." There was some nervous laughter from the jury who couldn't figure out whether it was Willow or Xander who was mocking their religion.

As Willow put the Bible back down on the table, Xander could hear her muttering some words in a foreign language. This went unnoticed by everyone save for the man sitting next to Lilah who muttered to her, "I sense emanations from the witch."

"Can you counter it?"

"I am&ldots; not certain," the wizard admitted. "Whatever it was, it was barely perceptible. It should be too small to have great import."

"Stop her," Lilah hissed. "We're paying you good money to counter her magic and she's far from stupid, whatever she did, there was a reason."

The wizard opened his mouth wide, wider than humans were capable of. Covering his mouth with his hand, pretending to yawn, he tasted the air. "A very subtle magic indeed. I sense it has not yet come into play." He redoubled his watchfulness of the redheaded witch.

Back in the front of the room, Willow had changed the subject. "One more thing, at your wedding to Anya, someone showed you something that made you leave her at the alter." Hearing that, a woman in the jury box glared at the witness. "What did he show you?"

"Objection!" yelled Carlos. "Completely irrelevant."

The judge looked at Willow who said, "I'll establish the relevance in a minute."

"Do so quickly."

There was no way around it. Xander had to answer "He showed me visions that he claimed were my future if I married Anya. But they were fake."

"So, in these illusions, you saw and heard things that weren't real?"

"Yes."

Willow pounced. "So, if I had all this magic power you claim, to cause earthquakes and dredge up old temples, couldn't I have created magical illusions of Warren's death? Illusions that you would mistake for reality?"

"Objection!" Carlos yelled. "The witness is not equipped to evaluate the defendant's magical powers." And I cannot believe I just said that, he thought to himself.

Judge Bone shook his head. This case would definitely get a whole chapter in his memoirs. "I can honestly say that all my years on my bench I have never heard weirder objections than those at this trial. Nevertheless, sustained."

"No further questions your honor." Willow said, knowing that the possibility of illusions had been planted in the jury's mind.

Xander wiped the sweat off his forehead. He'd rather do an hour of construction outside on the hottest day of the year than sit through another minute of Willow's verbal torture.

"Next witness," Carlos Columbia heard the bailiff say. He smiled to himself. He finally had a witness whose testimony stayed on the record. While his opponent had negated some of Xander's statements through a skillful cross-examination that suggested Xander had delusions of grandeur and a Christ-complex, as well as being subject to illusions, his next witness, thanks to Lilah Morgan, would say all the right things.

"The state calls Police Sergeant Gary Ravitch to the stand." The 12-year veteran of the Sunnydale PD stood up, placed his hand on the Bible that Willow had recently displayed to the jury, and with the ease of a man who had done this a thousand times before, said, "I, Gary Ravitch, swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth."

As he stood up to begin questioning the witness, Carlos Columbia completely failed to notice that the man next to Lilah Morgan, the wizard hired to counter Willow's magic, had collapsed.

Continued in the next part.

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