Author's Notes: Thanks again, as always, to everybody who takes the time to leave me a note. I really appreciate it! This chapter is short, but the next chapter is extra long, so I hope that makes up for it :)
Exothermic (Connor)
Connor wants to stay and fight, but Angel refuses him.
"Go home," Angel commands. "Now."
Connor shakes his head. "They'll destroy you."
"As long as you're okay, they can't," Angel replies. A pylon crashes to the ground, and the building shakes. Angel peers at the destruction. "Go," he says.
They share a look.
Angel knows he's going to die.
Certainty is painted on his face for Connor to read like an open book.
Connor's memories are jumbled and out of order, but he remembers things. He remembers living a vicious, hard life in another place. A dark place. A place with violence and with blood. He remembers Angel fighting for his life when Connor jumped him by surprise at … a beach? Someplace sandy, with rough, foamy water. Connor remembers that he used a knife. He remembers Angel's grunt of pain as the knife slid underneath his ribs, piercing an unneeded lung. Connor remembers the blood thirst, and the anger. He remembers knowing that he didn't belong in the world, and that he was a freak of nature and a mistake. He remembers … a woman. He can't think of her name, but he knows Angel loved her, and Connor bedded her, anyway. He remembers blaming Angel, too. Every day. For everything.
Connor remembers many things, disjointed, disconnected, disorganized.
He knows his new life is the only reason he isn't still living a war with the kaleidoscope pain and death he only half-remembers. He has a new father, and a new mother, a new family whom he loves and who loves him in return. He had a childhood that was whole and happy. He has new memories that aren't a synonym for misery.
He doesn't know the specifics, but he knows his new state of being is because of Angel. Because Angel has given up something … immeasurable in exchange.
This is why, when Angel tells Connor to go, Connor listens. He's never given Angel obeisance before. Not once. But he sort of feels like he owes it, now.
So, he runs.
He runs even knowing he's leaving Angel to die, even though the very thought of doing so makes him feel sick inside.
Los Angeles shakes as he flees, and its people are starting to panic. He can feel something in the air. Ominous. Uncomfortable. Hot. He feels it, and he knows. He needs to collect his car from the student parking lot, and he needs to go. Now.
He took a bus to Wolfram & Hart, but he doesn't want to wait for one to return. He grabs a pedal bike from the rack outside the building, carelessly snapping the lock on the chain, and he flees, pedaling for all he's worth. Traffic is a nightmare, and he's thankful for the bike, because it lets him race between stopped cars. He's almost back to his dorm room when his cell phone rings with a familiar tone. He skids to a stop and leaves the bike behind by the curb.
He runs.
"Connor!" his new father says when Connor picks up the phone. A hiss of static slices the next few words to senseless ribbons. "… circuits overloaded … okay?"
"What?" Connor yells into the receiver.
"Are you okay?" his father repeats.
"I'm fine, Dad," Connor says. "Are you?"
More static. "… All fi … oming to get you … ay in your dorm."
"No!" Connor snaps into the phone. "No, don't come get me. It isn't safe here! Go North! Get away from L.A.!"
But the line goes dead, and Connor can't call back. He tries over and over and over again, but he can't get through. He can't get past the thousands of other people who are also trying to reach their loved ones.
A streak of lightning cuts through the sky, followed by the rumble of thunder. Freakish, out-of-season rain bursts from clouds that weren't there forty-five minutes ago. Connor thinks he hears a roar in the distance. Like an actual roar. Like Godzilla or something. He wonders what in the hell Angel called forth from the abyss.
Connor waits in his dorm room as instructed, pacing, despite the urge to flee that sings in his bones. People are dashing down the halls, shrieking and crying. The building shakes again, and books fall from shelves to the floor. His computer monitor topples and breaks. The glass in all his picture frames shatters.
He wants escape with his classmates, like Angel instructed him to do. He wants to be far from here. Every sense in his body screams that the End is coming. He can feel it in the back of his throat. It tastes like ash on his tongue. Dread hums in his veins, and he feels like a tuning fork for disaster.
Every moment that passes, the worse he feels, until all he can hear bouncing around in his skull is run, run, run, run.
But he can't.
He can't run.
His family is coming to get him, and he can't leave. He doesn't want them to waste time searching for him when they get here, and they will, if he flees.
He flips on the news. Nobody knows what's going on. There are reports from Newport Beach to Thousand Oaks of fire and explosions and earthquakes and mayhem, of rioting and looting. The news stations wink out one by one like a cascade of dominos, until all he finds is the whine of an emergency broadcast signal on every channel, and then even those fade to static. After that, the power in the building winks out, plunging Connor into darkness, and he tosses the remote away in frustration.
He gets another call. "… arking lot!" his mother manages to shriek before the static-y call is dropped by the faltering, overloaded grid.
He slams into his father in the hallway as he's running to find his mother.
"Dad!" he exclaims as he rights himself and helps his father up.
"Come on!" his dad says, grabbing Connor's hand. "We're leaving. Right now." And they jet for the stairwell without another word.
They're spilling out of the emergency exit with a gaggle of straggling students when something overhead screams so loud the earth shakes. A blast of heat sucks the moisture from the air. The parking lot lights on fire. The flames dance sky high in a deadly, shimmering wall of heat. Everything for hundreds of feet is cinder.
Connor sees a sweep of leathery wings against black sky. There's another discordant, unearthly scream, followed by a pillar of fire streaking from the sky to the ground like a lightning strike. A plume of flame erupts in the next parking lot over, and the next, and the next.
He doesn't know where his mother is parked, but his dad loses it. Absolutely loses it. "Colleen! No!" Something hollows out Connor's insides, and he feels sick. Numb. Things seem to blur, and all he can hear is his dad wailing.
Another roar bisects the air. An explosion billows on the horizon. One of the buildings on the distant skyline crumples to the ground.
They don't have time for grief. Connor shakes himself out of a stupor and pulls his dad's hand. "Come on!" At first, his father won't budge. "Dad, come on!"
Though it takes his dad a moment, he manages to pull himself together enough to move, and he lets Connor yank him along.
Connor has no idea where to go. "Where's Krista and-?"
"In the car," his father replies, lip trembling. "W-with your mother."
Connor feels it like a kidney punch, but he doesn't let himself stumble. Doesn't let himself stop. He still has his dad. He can't stop, now.
People spill out onto the streets like ants, running, screaming, crying, flailing. Earthquakes tear the pavement apart. Cars skid and topple. Fire plumes everywhere.
Los Angeles is a dry, hot tinderbox in the summer. All it takes is one lit match to set the tinderbox ablaze, but this time there's a winged creature the size of a house dumping fire on the ground by the lungful, and there are broken gas lines by the dozen, spilling combustibles into the air. Not even the pouring rain is enough to stop the conflagration from clawing its burning fingers down every street and into every building.
And, still, they run.
They've been running for twenty minutes when a man in hysterics who's wearing only a hospital gown runs straight through them, slamming into Connor's outstretched arm. Connor's hand separates from his dad's. He turns around, frantic, as his dad is swept away by the panicked crowd.
"Dad!" he shouts so hard that the word tears his throat. "Dad!" Smoke and heat make his eyes water. He coughs. "Dad!" he croaks.
Connor loses his father for less than thirty seconds.
A squeal of tires followed by a metal crunch and the shriek of breaking glass deafens him. His ears ring. Things slow down, like time is stretching. For a few moments, the world is still, and silent, and then reality snaps back like a rubber band.
His father is pinned between the hood of an accordion-ed car and the crumbling brick wall of a pillaged grocery store. His eyes are glassy, and he isn't moving. He's dead. The driver is dead.
Everybody is dead.
Connor blinks, and he falls to his knees beside the twisted wreckage.
His lower lip trembles, and he clenches his fingers. His whole family just died. If they hadn't come for him, hadn't driven into the heart of a city on fire …. If they'd hopped into their Lexus and sped up Highway 1 toward Oxnard instead of .…
Tears stream down his face. Everything he touches turns to ash.
In his life, he's had three fathers, and they've all gone to ruin one by one. His family just died for him. They wouldn't have done that if Angel had never used magic to make them into Connor's family. And Angel never would have used magic to make them into Connor's family if .…
Connor closes his eyes as he hears the distant rumble of another building coming down.
"I wish I was never born," he says, the words tormented. He coughs. Smoke burns his eyes. His throat aches. "I wish I was never. Fucking. Born!"
A woman he doesn't recognize materializes next to him. He's too wasted with anguish to be surprised, or to care. She smiles at him, but it's a wicked smile that adds nausea to his grief. She puts a warm hand on his shoulder and squeezes it. Her necklace glows, a blue, cold fire in the hot, awful blur.
"Done," she says.
And with a snap of her fingers, life as Connor knows it disappears.
It is the End.