AN: I watched this movie again recently and I was suddenly consumed with the desire for post-movie fic with Marty and Dana and a post-apocalypse setting. I suppose the pairing would be Marty/Dana, but it's mostly a friendship/comfort fic.

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They're holding hands when the world ends.

Except, the world doesn't end.

These things, these…gods, burst out from under the ground and kill a lot of people, but for some reason these two are among the spared. Perhaps they failed to catch the notice of the gods, being so close to where the Earth was torn in two or maybe it's due to some strange sort of justice. Those who free the gods are shown their mercy.

Whatever the reason, they don't die.

They're holding hands when the world ends. But the world doesn't end, so they keep holding hands.

When someone helps you start the apocalypse and means to be holding you when you die, and then you don't die, you get used to having them around. It becomes necessary. They become necessary.

This is how they live now. Together.

He's there when she finds what's left of her parents.

She's there when he finds what's left of his.

They learn how to fight, learn how to be strong, learn how to survive.

Together. Always together. There's no other way (they don't speak about the werewolf).

She's tuning in channels on a radio she watched him repair when they here about other survivors. There's a place, somewhere in what used to be Canada, where people are gathering. A place with concrete and steel and supplies. A place the monsters can't touch. A place that might be safe, at least for a while.

They head north. Walking across the broken ground and sleeping in whatever abandoned house they can find and raiding the supermarkets and fighting off monsters and being ignored by the gods (some things don't change, he says).

They are touching nearly all the time, and always close enough to be. If one reaches, the other is always there, warm and solid to the touch.

Her hands are as familiar to him now as his own. He's afraid, sometimes, that if he lets her go for too long she'll disappear and he will be alone again, just like the cabin (it's selfish, he thinks, but he also thinks that he's entitled to be a little selfish with the one person he has left).

She is as comfortable with his body as she is with hers. He is there, always, as much a part of her as her arm or her leg and just as integral to her existence (sometimes she thinks that it can't be healthy to rely so much on another person, but then she remembers that everyone else she knows is dead and being alone would be much worse).

They walk hand-in-hand and sleep tangled together. If anything comes, it has to take them both. Package deal. That's just how it is now (they don't talk about the gun).

They make it to the compound. It's underground and it's bleak and it's a little too similar to the place that housed the nightmares for either of them to be completely comfortable. But it's safe.

Someone comes to the surface to collect them. She shakes her head sadly and clucks her tongue. She's muttering under her breath as she sweeps them inside. Just kids, she says, you're just kids.

Kids who were hunted.

Kids who have killed.

Kids covered in dirt and sweat and blood. None of it is from the night the world didn't end. None that's visible to anyone else, that is. When they close their eyes, it's still all either of them can see (they've been screaming in their sleep).

This is all our fault, they don't say.

They made us choose how to die and we chose this but we didn't die, they don't say.

We're so sorry, they don't say.

They do say, hello.

They do say, we need a place to stay.

They do say, we're strong enough to help.

They survive.

They keep surviving.

They don't let go.