Title: Until the end of the world, 5/5.
Fandom: Angel.
Characters: Connor, Faith.
Summary: Everything that has a beginning, has an ending. This includes the Slayer.

They drive for six days, and then abandon the jeep and start walking.

There aren't that many demons in the desert. It's almost safe, and Connor finds himself thinking that if humans have survived anywhere, it'll be places like this, where even with the sun gone the environment is harsh in the extreme. The weather doesn't help; a stinging wind that cuts like knives of ice and carries with it choking clouds of sand.

Faith's not looking for people, though.

--

It's hard to tell times of day since the end started, but he's fairly certain it's early afternoon when he sees the shadow.

"There's something following us." He says.

"I know." She replies.

"What…"

"It's not a demon." She keeps walking.

--

After a while, day and night blur. They sometimes stop and rest, and sometimes eat and drink from their rapidly lightening packs, and mostly they walk. And, every so often, Connor catches glimpses of the creature that shadows them.

Then suddenly, abruptly, the wind dies, and Connor stops. He has no idea how long they've been walking, but he doesn't feel tired.

After a few paces, Faith also stops.

Connor looks round. The desert stretches around them to the horizon. There are no longer dunes, or rocks, but only the flat, smooth sand, stretching to meet the dark skies of the horizon.

No. Not sand. Dust. He goes down on one knee and runs his hand through the fine grey ash that is the whole of the landscape, lifts a handful and lets it slip through his fingers. It has a familiar quality, and that's no surprise; he's lost count of the number of times this same dust has burst into the air around his thrusting stake.

Faith hasn't asked him why he's stopped.

"Where are we?" He asks.

"The desert." She replies, and he almost yells at her before he realises that she's deadly serious. Faith is facing him, and then she turns to her left, and he turns to follow her, and they're suddenly underground, walking down a tunnel.

Looking back, he sees a faint circle of dim light behind them.

"Whoa." Faith says, and the sound is so incongruous it almost makes him flinch. "Now, that I didn't expect." She's smiling, suddenly.

He looks past her, to the end of the tunnel, and sees the flicker of firelight, shadows moving past it.

He feels the age of this place, pressing in all around him.

Faith starts forward, and he catches her arm. She turns to him, face patient.

"Do you know what's down there?"

"Only one way to find out." She smiles then, and suddenly his life hurts.

He pauses. It's something he learned, long ago, from one of his fathers. The memories blur, and he can no longer remember which one, but he remembers the quiet voice.

"There's always more than one way of doing things." He points out.

"Do you know a better way?"

He can't meet her gaze.

And then there's a scrabbling sound, and something appears from the chamber ahead of them. Dark skin and tangled hair, wrapped in pale grey cloth. Face painted in streaks of white. Body muscle and bone, stripped down to efficiency, and the creature stares at them out of dark, dead eyes.

Faith's faster than him, and stronger than him, and she catches his hand an inch from his knife.

"What is it?" He asks, although he doesn't expect her to have an answer.

"The first." She answers quietly. "I have to go." She steps away from him, towards the creature.

"The first what?" He demands urgently, following her towards the firelight.

"I'm the last, she's the first." She replies, in the same calm tones. "Stay here."

He doesn't bother to answer that, just presses forwards. The creature moves to bar his path, and Faith turns.

"Thank you for bringing me here." She tells him, and he can't look away.

"What next?" He asks, desperate.

"Do what you've always done." She replies, and it seems to him that it's no longer Faith talking, no longer Faith who stands opposite to him in the rocky tunnel. The creature is gone from between them, but for a moment he thinks he sees it standing where she was. And then it's gone, but there are a million other girls standing there, all at once. And in a way all of them are Faith.

"There was a compact, once upon a time." She replies, and she speaks in Faith's voice, but it's as if he's suddenly noticing that Faith's voice is made up of a million others. "From first to last, it must be ended."

She turns away once more, and walks to the firelight, a million girls in a single body.

"And me?" He doesn't say it out loud, barely even breathes the words, but she somehow hears them.

"Survive, Connor." She tells him. "Survive." Her hand reaches behind her back, sliding her knife from its sheath. And then she steps into the cave.