Foreword: All characters belong to Joss Whedon and/or David Greenwalt. Also, I think I've gone crazy, because this is not something that I normally write. Anyway. This takes place in Buffy's seventh season, and Angel's fourth, (except for where Cordelia comes back and Angel's in love with her, because I don't like her) and I'm thinking that there really aren't too many spoilers. Old characters will be returning. Lots of Slayer/Vampire-with-a-soul action (and as far as I know, that doesn't extend to just Buffy and Angel).

The Darkest Hour Before Dawn

Sixteen

"Bloody hell," Spike said. He walked up the steps to stand in front of Darla. He reached out to touch her, and she raised her hand and put it against his. "You are alive."

"Another part of the prophecy falling into place," came a voice from behind them. They all looked to see Giles sitting on the ruined sidewalk. Buffy picked her way down the ruins and threw her arms around him. Giles patted her back awkwardly, somewhat startled.

"What's all this prophecy garbage everyone's feeding us?" Faith asked. "Lucy tells us that we have to run, cuz that's what the prophecy says. Now you're telling us that Darla being the living dead—in non-vampire form—is some prophecy related crap as well?"

"Isn't it lovely being a Slayer?" Buffy said, letting go of Giles.

"Yes, well, it's the end of the world," Giles said.

"Obviously," Spike said, taking Darla's hand and leading her down the stairs. "What happened here?"

"An earthquake," Giles said. "One of definitely epic proportions, as it went on for almost ten minutes."

Buffy looked at him. "Well…" she said.

Everyone looked at her. Faith reached out and took her hand. "We've got work to do, B."

~`~

"Okay, so, the epicenter of the quake was here," Wesley said, drawing a circle on a map spread across the table in Buffy's house. It had been the only place left for them to go after the mansion collapsed around them.

"Then I say we go there," Faith said. She was sitting backward in a dining chair, her dark hair pulled back from her face. Next to her was Buffy.

Giles looked at the two women, grown so much from the girls they had been once. Where irresponsible teenagers had been, the two women in charge of saving the world now stood. But if Willow and himself could do anything, the two women could finally rest.

No rest of the wicked, Giles thought to himself. That was not his girls.

~`~

It was Buffy's worst nightmare. It was like the mouth of hell had opened and everything within was spilling out into Sunnydale. She was covered in sweat, covered in blood, her blonde hair matted to her head with gore. Angel fought at her side, tall, strong, her champion. A cut ran down the side of his face, dark blood running down his cheek and staining the neck of his white shirt—the lightest color she'd ever seen him wear, except for in her dreams.

Faith ran past her, pants ripped, hair flying, covered in blood. "Holdin' up, B?" she cried. Buffy made a grunt of assent as she swung her sword through yet another minion of The First. Spike fought at Faith's side, the perfect match for her, fire and rage and power flowing through both of them. Faith kept her back against Spike's, working steadily through dozens of harbingers and malformed, pure-demon vampires.

Buffy suddenly saw the fight from the outside, Connor swinging his axes, Angel snapping harbinger necks as they attempted to get to the Slayer. Spike lashing out with a torch, his peroxide hair glinting in the light of the fire. Faith carried a stake, shoving it into the hearts of demon and harbinger alike.  Anya and Xander fought together, over their aborted wedding and thrown together once again in the face of death. Oz watched over Giles, Wesley, and Willow, who worked to break open the dam that allowed the mystical power of the Slayer that said it had to be One Girl In All The World to go from a trickle to a raging river.

"Buffy RUN!" She heard faith scream on the edges of her senses. She came back to herself, and saw the first, in all it's non-corporeal glory striding into the fray, passing through the hordes as it moved.

Buffy remembered her dream.

The ground turned to mud around her and began sucking her down. Faith screamed and began to run, whipping into the woods. Buffy's feet slid easily from her shoes and she ran, ran for her life, for the Prophecy that would save the world, into the woods.

~`~

Darla was not in the slightest bit human. She still had the supernatural strength of her vampire self, while retaining her human emotion. She didn't know what she was.

Buffy and Faith had related their prophetic dream in great detail. When they departed, she knew she had to move forward. She strode into the battle, clean and shining, and moved to fight at the side of her son and his father. They fought, the three of them, this tiny, twisted family, bones cracking, blood spilling, dust flying in their faces and eyes.

The horde of demons began to diminish around them. The First remained, watching, using Buffy's form, battered, bruised, and bloodied.

The chanting that the Werewolf guarded grew louder, reaching a fever pitch. The air grew heavy and began to shimmer with energy.

Darla turned as she heard her son let out a cry.

"NO!" Angel yelled.

The First laughed, and the Legions of Hell departed as the Destroyer fell to the ground, his own knife protruding from his chest, blood soaking into the white shirt that he wore, stained and sweaty and thick with the ashes of dead vampires. Darla and Angel moved to their son's side.

"It has to be this way," Connor whispered.

Bloody tears streaked down Angel's face, dripping from his chin to splash onto the still-childish cheeks of his only child, his son. Darla's own tears, the pearlescent ones as she had shed on the Ghost Roads splashed onto the other cheek.

"Dad," Connor managed, dark blood—heart blood—bubbling from his lips, "you have to go. You have to fight, for me. For the world."

Darla looked at Angel, and Angel reached out a hand to close his son's eyes, glassy with death.

"Go," Darla said. "I will bring him out of here."

"You…" Angel began, but had no words. He motioned to her. She looked down, and saw her skin becoming translucent.

"I have to take him home now," Darla said. Angel merely nodded, watching as his Sire, glowing with the light of her forgiven Soul, gathered their son into her arms. "Go, Angel. Save the world. Save Buffy."

Angel stood and fled back to where Oz stood guard over Willow.