Title: Until the end of the world.
Fandom: Angel.
Characters: Connor.
Summary: Bad things happen. Connor is patient.

Disclaimer: He's not mine. None of them are.

Until the End of the World

The world started ending in New York. Nobody was expecting it.

It took Connor nearly a month to get across America and find out what was going on.

The demons had loved it. The sun had fallen from the sky, the stars had screamed their agony, the moon had bled, and the demons had come out to play. Very few humans survived the first few days. Once the massacre was more or less complete, the demons started killing one another. And why not? The world was ending.

Connor survived, but then, he wasn't really human. He'd accepted that years ago, accepted that more than two thirds of his memories were artificial, and that's if you don't count their replacements, the absurdities and impossibilities and horrors that he knew to be the truth.

So when the world ended, Connor fought to protect his family, until they were all dead, and then he fought to avenge them, until he was the only living thing in his town. And then he found a car and some fuel, and started driving.

After a few miles, he found a motorcycle; the roads were backed up with wrecked cars and dead people, and until he ran out of gas and had to start walking, it proved the fastest transport around.

He met his first Slayer on the fourth day. Somebody had nailed what was left of her to a church door, and carved what she had been into the flesh of her torso. Connor was travelling fast, and he'd never really got to know any Slayer, let alone this one, but even so he took the time to stop and slaughter everything that moved in that particular town. It proved awkward, at times; several of the demons even managed to touch him. Six years of living a normal life had left him rusty and out of shape.

The world had gone to hell, he knew. But he'd grown up in hell, and been feared, and this place was nothing to Quor-Toth.

He found his second, third, fourth and fifth Slayers a week later. They had been crucified along the interstate, signs hung around their necks. One of them was still alive, although she could no longer speak. Her eyes begged for death, and he gave it to her. The second human life that he had taken, and he killed nothing else in that place, but just drove on.

The Slayers had been based in New York, he knew. His father - his natural father - had kept him informed of these things occasionally, little pieces of information, allowing him to live outside this world without isolating him from it. There were times when Connor hated Angel for not allowing him to escape, but now he had nothing else to go on.

Angel was dead, he knew. The vampire would have come for Connor if he had survived, and so he must be dead.

Connor walked through Virginia, and saw the fires of Washington DC. He didn't know what had happened there, but he was prepared to guess that there had been a lot of symbolism involved.

He had left a lot of dead demons behind him, although he was no longer sure why. After all, he hadn't seen any humans in two weeks, living or dead; there was nothing left to fight for, nothing left to champion. Mostly, he killed for the pleasure of violence. He was Connor, he was the son of Angelus and of Holtz, he was the Destroyer, and if he could not find peace, he would find vengeance.

In the wreckage of a diner, in New Jersey, thirty-seven days after the world began to end, Connor met Faith.