I do not own Buffy: The Vampire Slayer.
Faith sighed as she sat next to Buffy's bed.
"B., are you…" She trailed off as Buffy smiled.
"I'm OK, Faith. Don't worry. You don't have to check in on me every ten minutes." Buffy assured, holding Faith's hand.
"We're gonna find that son of a bitch and make him pay." Faith said.
"It's the same guy that kidnapped Cordy, is it?" Buffy realized.
"Miss Calendar and Cor's friend from L.A., some science geek, Fred, alongside Red are onto him." Faith said.
"They found him?" Buffy asked as Faith shook her head.
"Not yet but they're close. You know Willow and Miss Calendar, some tech IT mumbo jumbo that I couldn't understand much but from what I got, they tracked down the IP address of the website where the creep had posted, now they're just gonna have to find the computer from where he was posting the pictures." Faith explained and Buffy nodded before Buffy's phone rang as she answered the call.
"Hello?" Buffy asked. "Yes. Buffy Summers here. Uh-huh. Yeah." She nodded, listening as her hand in which she had the phone, trembled, with a look of horror on her face and tears forming in her eyes but as she spoke up, she was trying to keep her tone even as Faith held her hand. "I… I see. Thank you. You have no idea how happy I am to hear it." She hung up as she held Faith's hand, looking relieved but on verge of tears.
"B.?" Faith asked.
"They got him. They found his house and caught him trying to escape. They found the binders in which he had our pictures, he's in custody now. It was…" Buffy breathed heavily, reliving the horror. "I should've known. It was…" She clenched her fists, looking angry.
"Who?" Faith asked.
"It was Warren Mears." Buffy said in mix of anger, relief and horror.
Their families, the students and the group especially was shocked upon hearing the news. They had always known that Warren Mears was odd but none of them had imagined him to be capable of something like this.
Cordelia had always considered Warren even a bigger loser than Buffy, Willow and Xander and Warren's odd attitude itself had already been creeping others out that they seldomly interacted with him closely, while he also mostly kept to himself but now that the truth was revealed, that he was the one who had humiliated and degraded her and Buffy and who-knows-how-many-other girls for his own perverse pleasure and games. She covered her mouth upon hearing the news and felt sick as she sat down, with Xander, Willow and Tara being there to calm her down.
"I should've known something was off about that son of a bitch." Xander said, clenching his fists, clearly angry.
"He's lucky I didn't get my hands on him." Faith said.
"Cordelia has been taking it really hard, not that I blame her." Willow said and Xander nodded, seeing Cordelia staring at the window and burying her nails onto the windowsill, while Xander approached and held her by her shoulders from behind as she flinched but relaxed upon realizing it was Xander.
"Hey. It's OK, Cordy. It's over." Xander said as Cordelia relaxed and hugged him, on verge of tears, while he wrapped his arms around her, doing whatever little he could to soothe her.
"I'm still having a hard time believing it. For all we know, we could've been next." Tara said as she and Willow observed Xander and Cordelia.
"At least he's not gonna hurt anyone, ever again." Faith said and they nodded.
Few days later, Buffy had been discharged from the hospital, her, Cordelia and the rest of the girls relieved that the nightmare was finally over and she was back home, with Buffy preparing her dress, while Joyce was entering, also in dress.
"Honey, are you sure about this?" Joyce asked as Buffy sighed.
"Honestly, no. But I want this to be over. And if this is the only way… I'll do it." Buffy said, taking a deep breath.
Cordelia took a shaky breath as she stood outside the courtroom before she noticed Buffy being accompanied by Joyce and Dawn, who were with Willow and Tara too and Cordelia could tell why. While she and Buffy would often be at odds, they were still close friends and Cordelia cared about to Dawn, Willow and Tara were almost surrogate mothers, while Cordelia would be her surrogate sister too. If Cordelia had been trading her place with Willow or Tara, with Buffy still being the victim, she would also look out for Dawn.
It was then, when after Buffy, she was being summoned to the witness stand. The case against Warren was strong and no lawyer with any sense of decency would defend him, since he had no legal ground to stand on after what he had done. It was then, when Lilah Morgan, the prosecutor of the case called Buffy to the stand.
Buffy took a breath as she was at the stand, while Lilah spoke up. "Buffy Anne Summers. One of the victims of the incident. Am I correct?"
Buffy took a breath again and nodded, trying to keep her voice leveled. "Yes, ma'am."
"If you are in the state, I would like you to fill me and the jury and the courtroom in on what exactly happened to you, Miss Chase and other girls, in your own words." Lilah said as Buffy briefly looked at Warren, who gave her a brief glare and fumed before turning to the crowd, while Buffy looked down and took deep breaths, trying to get ahold of herself and rubbing her hands, suppressing the traumatic memories. "Miss Summers. Are you in state to answer my question?"
Buffy took a breath and met Lilah's eyes, with her face being a blank emotionless mask, calculating. "I was going home from a visit of my friend. It was dark. I thought someone was following me." She took deep breaths, trying not to let the trauma get to her, rubbing her hands, describing her kidnapping, capture and the nightmare that followed and she paused at some moments, closing her eyes. Even though she was offered a break, Buffy managed to continue her testimony until the end, trying to stay calm, even though it was happening again in front of her eyes, when Warren spoke up.
"I object! She's lying! She knew her value and she was high and out of it—"
The judge banged the gavel and the sharp sound echoing throughout the courtroom and the glare from the judge shut Warren up as he sat down, realizing it would be unwise to protest and that he was done, especially, when Cordelia joined in as second victim and there were others too, with Willow and Tara and Faith as witnesses and with Warren's binders with photos of the girls who had been subjected to the humiliating and derogating photoshoot as damning evidence, it was a no-brainer how the jury would decide, especially when Warren still attempted to protest but was cut off.
"Given the amount of testimony, proof and the accused attempts of defense in spite of compelling evidence gathered against him, I think there is no room for doubt, is there?" Lilah asked, turning to the jury, who had already reached its verdict and the judge announced the sentence, turning to Warren.
"Warren Mears, you are found guilty of kidnapping, attempted sexual assault, leaking damning photographs without consent and threatening and attempted murder. You are sentenced to 30 years to life imprisonment with no chance of parole." The judge said, banging the gavel as Warren gasped in disbelief before glaring at Buffy, Cordelia and the other girls, fuming as the guards grabbed him and carried him away, while the girls were relieved, happy to know it was over, looking forward to the future and hopefully put this horrific incident behind.
Few days later, the group resumed their normal lives, since it seemed that with Warren in prison, they could finally move on.
"It just feels strange coming back to school after what's happened." Buffy said as she and Cordelia were looking around to be sure no one was stalking them, not that anyone blamed them.
"Hey, creep's in jail, no one's stalking us anymore, we're five-by-five." Faith said.
"Faith's right, let's enjoy the peace while we still can." Willow said as she held Tara's hand.
The students were approaching them and asking them about their wellbeing or trying to befriend them, most likely in an attempt to score some popularity but the group assured them that everything was alright, but unknowing to them, there were two men observing them, one of them being a bulky dark-haired man in black jacket and another one was a bit smaller with blonde hair.
"Is it them?" The younger one asked.
"Yeah. We've been screwed but we'll get what we deserve." The older one said.
"I don't know, Tucker, how do you wanna grab those?"
"Don't worry, Andrew, I've got some ideas. We paid good money for those pictures and we'll earn them." Tucker said, smirking, while he and Andrew were giving the girls leery looks.
I made just a small reference to Fred and Jenny. Lilah being a good lawyer was kind of ironic but couldn't resist a reference.
And Warren may be arrested but as you've noticed, it's far from over and yup, Tucker and Andrew are here too.
But really, how I hate Andrew. It's astounding how some people, who clearly lack any functional brain cell like him. First of all, he was Warren's lapdog, happily listening to his every whim, unlike Jonathan, who was more reluctant and actually showed remorse over his actions, unlike those two. Andrew was a willing participant in using Katrina as a rape doll with Warren and was also happy to get away with murdering her and try to frame Buffy for it and do not forget that when in 7x13 Willow was turned into Warren by Amy's spell, that little bastard was actually happy to see the attempted rapist and misogynist, anyone else would've killed that piece of shit on the spot, Andrew in that instant showed he had not changed one bit and that the only reason he joined the Scooby Gang was out of self-preservation, so that they would protect him from the First Evil and it makes his 'redemption' in follow-up comic books fall flat, he may have been useful in comic books too but he didn't really show any character growth with his storytelling shtick, which was boring and on more than one occasion Buffy and Spike or someone else from the Scoobies had to clean up more of his screw-ups. And in Angel 5x11 when Andrew told Angel no one trusted him anymore because he was with Wolfram & Hart, at least Buffy and Willow would've given Angel the benefit of the doubt, plus, Giles was the one who had sent Andrew, not Buffy, so for all we know, given Giles's dislike of Angel and Spike in general, either Giles told Andrew to tell Angel the Scoobies didn't trust him anymore, which I wouldn't put past Giles after he had conspired with Robin to kill Spike behind Buffy's back or Andrew, as usual, was being an idiot and trying to impress Giles and Xander, given their dislike of Angel in general.