Title: turn left

Summary: It's about choice. Six ways the world didn't end, plus one. Cabin in the Woods fanfic. 1.4k
Trope deconstruction for the win. You gotta love Joss.

6. Turn left (the one where she chooses)
Dana puts two bullets in Marty, then one in her head. We live in the world we make.

It's not worth it.

5. You made us choose how we died (the optimistic one)
"I name you a fool." Says Dana. Shifting the gun from Marty to the woman who engineered all of this, lips curling into a twist. The moment between the bullet and her heart is enough for her eyes to widen. The director has enough time to scream as she stumbles over the edge. The rumbling of the earth stops and the fool's outline shimmers with blood.

Marty yanks her out of the way of the werewolf and they run, hand in hand, hearts pounding. They can still hear the slaughter going on behind them but outside, outside the sun is rising.

4. The one where she chooses (and lives with it)
Dana empties the clip in to Marty, hands shaking, head spinning. The earth stops moving. She just saved the world but it doesn't feel like that. Feels like she just murdered the only friend she had left. The director lays a hand on her shoulder says, "let's get you cleaned up." It's easy to whip the gun around into her head, easier still to leave the woman unconscious on the ground. There's what looks like a werewolf eyeing them hungrily, so she backs away slowly. Its more interested is the Director then her so she walks away. Finds the access tunnels and climbs out, slowly, painfully.

It's an hour and a half on foot to the nearest town. There's a diner she goes into. She takes a seat and the waitress puts a hand on her shoulder gentle-like. "Sweetheart, you need help?"

Dana's gore splattered and numb. There's a tv on overhead, tuned to the news. War in the Middle East, drug rings in South America, the oncoming energy crisis. The only other customer asks his waiter to change the channel. He doesn't need this depressing shit before breakfast.

This is the world they died for?

She took too long to respond and waitress has left, probably gone to call the police.

She'll be gone by the time the waitress comes back.

3. Heroes don't kill anybody but themselves (the genre savvy says)
"It's easier" Marty says offering Dana the gun "with this."

She shudders and pushes it away. "I'd rather die."

He laughs. "If this were a movie you'd live to regret that."

Oh she does.

The director isn't carrying a gun. Can't carry a gun if what they've read between the lines is correct. This is about choice. They have to choose, ignore the old man at the gas station, to continue up the road, how they die. The bitch is telling them you or the world. And there's a choice. Of course there's a fucking choice.

Marty has the gun still in hand. She wants him to love every soul in the world but really it's come down to this. Is Dana worth dying for? There isn't time to assess the pros and cons. 'Cause he could go on for hours about the how the world is ending and how it's time to for a new species but talking is not the same thing as doing, not doing. Suicide. Say the word like he means it because otherwise it's not a choice. Should he soften it? Call it martyrdom.

Killing yourself for the sake of the world. Sounds like the sort of shit a hero would do. He's not, forever too aware of the things that should stop him.

The ground is rumbling beneath his feet. Marty thinks of his mother. She'll be asleep when the sun rises. Sleeping through the apocalypse. Dana's standing across from him, her eyes wide. The director wants him to love the whole damn world but it's this- a girl who's covered in blood and the thought of his mother sleeping through the giant evil gods apocalypse.

Gun to his head and this is a choice.

2. Do not go gently (goodnight)
She's bleeding, from the neck. He wants to apologize for that, the werewolf and choosing to let the world end. He's bleeding too, and the world's going fuzzy round the edges. Hell of a night. He's cold, so is she leaning against him.

Jules, if she were still alive, would babbling about blood loss and shock, pre-med and the fuckers reduced her to the whore. He fumbles for the joint he knows is tucked away in his jeans, fumbles the lighter even more. It drops from his hands and he realizes he can't feel them. Beside him, Dana reaches for the lighter, slow, and clumsy, not like herself at all. She lights the joint with an effort and takes a hit. Passes it to him. His vision has tunneled down to her hand and the joint. Nothing left. Wants to say something but the words trip over his tongue. His heart slows, stutters, stops.

This is the absence of choice.

1. You made us choose how we died (the pessimistic one)
Japan maintains it's perfect record. The control room gets the news as Marty is dying off screen. They pop champagne bottles because this doesn't matter anymore, and leave the victims unmonitored until the emergency sirens sound as the base has been breached.

They glance to the screens and see the survivors. There have been base breaches before, but never here. Protocol has the manager choosing what to do with them. Hadley lifts the bottle and salutes their screen, and tells the operators to drop them in the entrance hall. Says, "Keep the doors closed til we get there." A band of the security men and the controllers gather round the door. Security keeps guns leveled on the elevator and it dings as it opens out of place in the sterile halls.

They offer the kids hard liquor, a toast to their deaths becoming unnecessary. The girl looks like she'll be sick, but the boy clamps a hand around her arm and takes the glass, toasts them with a cold smile. He hands it off to her and she knocks it back a little too fast.

They get drunk in a corner of the control room and when the intern tries to hit on Dana, Marty snarls and shoves his way in between the two of them. They're both shaking and drunk, and they understand this was a choice. The controllers could have lit up the elevator as soon as it arrived but they didn't and they are going to live.

So is the world.

0. Hope is a thing with feathers (and your wings are broken)
The giants rise but they live.

Maybethey were too close to the epicenter to be noticed, ants too small to be crushed. Maybe this is their idea of mercy. The gods will not kill those who release the gods. He was holding her hand when the world ended. They haven't let go yet.

They hike out of what used to be the woods, flattened now, and find the remains of a town. She hot-wires a car and he's impressed. They hit the road, what's left of them headed south for their parents' homes. He's there when they find the remains of her parents. She's there when they find the remains of his.

They hold on.

The survivors of the apocalypse are gathering east in what used to be Colorado. It's not much, the radios say, but there's food, shelter. The car Dana hot-wired died a week ago and she could start another but it's hard to find an uncrushed car so they're on foot until future notice. Backpacking across the end of the world. They don't talk about the others but this is the shit they planned for back in college, more zombie apocalypse then giant evil gods but it's close enough. The plans translate even if the monsters are different.

It's a month on foot, less if they can find a car.

Two weeks in and a car they should have heard miles ago, in the unnaturally silent brave new world, pulls up along side them, rolls down the window. The first living they've seen since the world ended stare at them.

"Jesus," the woman says "You're just kids."

Her hand has already found his. And the look they share is dripping with irony.

They don't say they made us choose how we died, that it was the world, or us and we chose ourselves. They don't apologize for their choice.

They do say hello, introduce themselves, and hitch a ride south.

They survive. And his hand never leaves hers.