Disclaimer: I don't own Until Dawn.
A/N: So I saw this tumblr post that proposed an AU where everything was basically the same except Mike was one taken by the wendigo and Jess was one the one who set out to rescue him and became the action hero of the game. In addition someone had posted pictures where all the other characters had swapped places too – and essentially this idea has run away with my brain. xD So this fic is basically Mike and Jess swap places, and so do Chris and Ashley, Matt and Emily, and Josh and Sam.
(AKA, the one where the four girls get to be totally kick-ass. This was the easiest fic to name ever. Also, Josh gets a surprising amount of screen time, dunno how that happened.)
Four Daughters of Darkness
Virtually the first thing that happens when they get to the lodge is that Mike and Matt start a not-so-subtle bitch fight.
Josh watches with resigned dismay, but not surprise, as the barbed words fly back and forth across room. He is aware of Chris slipping over to stand next to him, his best friend commenting in a wry undertone, "Well, that didn't take long. I owe you ten bucks."
A brief smile tugs at Josh's lips but it doesn't do much to disperse the growing feeling of hollowness somewhere in his ribcage. "Kinda obvious." A blind man could tell that Mike and Matt's relationship had suffered what seemed like an irreparable schism after Emily had broken up with the former and started dating the latter.
"Why did you invite everyone back then?" Chris' question is tentative, not wanting to tread on sensitive toes. It doesn't help – the mere reminder makes pain flare in Josh's chest, a counterpoint to the hollow, gnawing ache. This entire place is one big horrible reminder but –
"Sam," he murmurs, unaware of the way his tone softens a little. "She asked if it was okay. She – she's having just as rough a time as we are." Understatement of year, as Chris well knows. Hannah had been Sam's best friend and Beth – Beth she had loved quietly for some time before That Night. But all of Beth's love had been reserved for Emily and when Matt had drunkenly proposed a plan to Mike to get her to stop eyeing his girlfriend, Emily had agreed to participate willingly enough. It had been that more than anything that had shattered Beth – he'd seen it in her eyes before she ran out into the snow, a furious and protective Hannah in pursuit.
When Sam had woken in the aftermath sometime near dawn, the alcohol cleared from her system, her rage had been a frightening thing to behold.
"I know." Chris asks quietly, still watching the standoff between Mike and Matt. "I would've thought – thought she wouldn't want to be here either."
Josh clears his throat painfully. "Closure, I think. Everyone deals with it differently, Cochise. I gave Sam the keys to this place last week and she's been working her butt off to clean it up and bring up supplies to get it ready for this weekend."
Chris sighs. "If that's what she needs." The way Sam had pulled away from them for months after the Incident had been frightening – their little core group of five had been reduced to three and further whittled down to two by Sam's withdrawal from the world. Josh and Chris had been lost for a long time without the three girls that had been with them since they were nine (and far longer in Josh's case.)
It had been made even worse by Chris' very drunken participation in the prank and their own relationship had been frosty for a while. But eventually, once the storm of hurt and betrayal had died down, Josh had remembered Chris' poor impulse control when wasted and had forgiven him. (Nearly ten years of friendship was difficult to forget and it wasn't like he'd never done stupid shit when drunk. It was Chris' bad luck that the outcome had been so much worse any of Josh's drunken lapses in judgement.)
"I think it is what she needs." Josh tears his thoughts away from the past with difficulty, forcing himself to think of what Sam needs right now. He steps forward, sick of the argument, the poisonous words filling the air, and all too ready to butt in and offer Mike and Jess the guest cabin.
Please let this weekend give Sam the closure she needs. God knows, it's going to be hellish.
xxx
Mike's cries of pain and fear echo through the trees and Jessica curses furiously, pushing herself to run faster. "Mike," she shouts back, "Michael!"
Keep calling, she thinks desperately, leaping across a set of barrels half-submerged in a stream. Let me know you're alive, please God –
The winter air biting against her exposed arms and she curses the fact she left her jumper and jacket back at the house and is running through the goddamn snow in in only her t-shirt and jeans.
Mike's only in his boxers, and bleeding, and wounded, oh God –
She tightens her grip on the shotgun and thanks all her lucky stars that her Aunt taught her to shoot and that her Mom encouraged her to stay on the track team –
"Jessica!" Mike's scream cuts through the air again and all thoughts are wiped from her head in a surge of blind panic.
"Mike!" she screams back and pushes off from the ground faster, faster faster faster. "I'm coming Mike!"
xxx
Ashley's mind is full of white noise, panic paralysing her as the maniac laughs, insane amusement bouncing off the walls and echoing inside the shed. "Choose, Ashley," the deep voice says and Sam and Chris struggle furiously against their bonds.
Ashley chooses the boy she loves over one of her best friends and Sam's horrified, betrayed expression is stamped indelibly in her mind, even as the sawblade cuts her in half.
Ashley helps a shaking Chris down, and already drowning in grief and guilt, thinks miserably that it would have been easier to kill herself.
(She deeply regrets this thought not two hours later.)
xxx
Matt is strong, for all his gentleness, but he has none of Emily's trained muscle. She is the one who wields the axe against the door with furious, focused intent, ignoring the flying splinters lodging in her letterman jacket, and kicks it open with a satisfying bang.
This fucker is going to regret messing with us, she thinks grimly, even as she snaps at and berates her hapless boyfriend. He regards her with quiet reproach but doesn't say anything, bearing her sharp tongue with strained patience and a kind heart.
They find a map of the area showing the fire tower and Matt is quick to piece together a plan, his wonderful intellect shining through as he does so. For a moment, Emily remembers why she was attracted to him in the first place, before the softer feelings are swept aside, into the place in Emily's heart labelled 'Unnecessary'.
"C'mon brainiac," she snaps, pulling down the metal ladder. "There's a lot of ground to cover."
He sighs and follows her out of the cable car station with the same weary patience as he always does.
(Not half an hour later, he talks her out of swinging the axe against a deer instead of a door, and she will never admit it, but she is grateful given how things turn out.)
xxx
Josh has never in his life regretted taking a bath more.
Running through the lodge's basement in nothing but a towel was not on the agenda for this evening, especially not when pursued by a fucking psycho in a clown mask.
Oh God, don't fall off! He makes a silent prayer as the towel start slipping yet again, grabbing for it before it can unravel completely. The only thing worse than running through basement in a towel, is running through the basement in nothing at all.
He runs and hides and runs, but it makes no difference in the end and the psycho catches him with a pleased purr of "Got you", voice rumbling and distorted through the modulator. The sleeping gas fills his lungs and Josh sinks down into the dark.
xxx
Emily leaps for safety and makes it just as the tower falls, Matt's horrified face disappearing down into the chasm. I tried, she reminds herself savagely, trying to push down the guilt. I fucking tried, okay, and it was obvious it was going to fall. There was no point in both of us dying.
She limps away into the darkness of the mines, ignoring the unnecessary part of her heart.
xxx
Josh wakes to the sight of Jess' face peeking through a grate in the wall at floor level, her features smudged with dirt. She's wearing an unfamiliar green coat about five sizes too big for her, and a deeply worried expression of the kind that he's never seen directed at him before – at least not from her anyway.
"Josh?" she hisses frantically, reaching up to the grip the bars, and holy fuck what the hell happened to her hand –
"I'm okay," he manages to slur, still woozy from the gas. With a little teamwork, the ties around his wrists and ankles are undone, and he's spilling his story to her.
"Shit," she mutters, going even paler. "Shit, it must be the same guy who murdered Mike."
Josh's thoughts screech to a halt. "Mike is dead?" he chokes out. He doesn't know why he's surprised – the maniac murdered Sam too (and oh God, that hurts like fire, like the death of his sisters; she's gone too, the girl he adored even as she adored Beth). It's not much of a stretch to think that this psycho would kill other people too.
"Yes." Jess' reply is a snarl, fury and grief tangled together. "I'm going to find this fucker and kill him." The light in her eyes makes it impossible to disbelieve her but Josh has no sympathy for Sam's murderer.
(Later on the irony of this thought is enough to make him weep.)
xxx
The retort of the gun right next to Ashley's ear is deafening but the seconds pass and she's not dead, and she meets Chris stunned gaze across the table.
After summoning the courage to kill herself she barely has any left over to spare, but she still manages to dig deep enough to aim the gun with shaking hands at the psycho when he appears and depress the trigger.
He fails to fall and Ashley realises why she's still alive, even as the deep, electronic voice mockingly reminds her of the existence of blanks.
She barely has enough time to think but why blanks before the maniac reaches towards his mask and then all questions are wiped clean from her mind by shock.
xxx
Josh's eyes are fixed on the tableau ahead of them, illuminated by light in the darkness of the derelict basement. Jess is sprinting by his side as they race towards Ashley and Chris, even as Ash raises a gun and fires and the psycho is laughing and the psycho is reaching for his mask –
And the psycho is Sam and there's a ringing in Josh's ears and he can't seem to breathe properly as the universe grinds to a halt. The only thing he can see is Sam's blonde hair, haloed around her face and glowing in the light, even as she tilts her face and laughs and smiles, but it's wrong, off, there's an edge of mania to her voice and an unsettling glow in her hazel eyes, a delirious light.
She paces and rants, and Josh can only watch and think, How did I miss this? How did I not see how ill she is? He is too preoccupied with his own emotions, the welter of shock and betrayal and anger and heartbreak, to notice the thunderous fury growing on Jess' face.
He does however, notice when the blonde blurs forward and lays Sam out with a single punch and a furious scream of "Mike is dead, you fucking asshole!"
He leaps forward, an instinctive protest on his lips as he places himself between the blonde girls. "She's sick, Jess!"
Jess glowers at him, massaging her knuckles. "That doesn't change the fact that she killed someone, Josh." Her voice falters for the first time, and Josh gets a brief glimpse of the sea of grief behind her overwhelming rage, before she turns away and breathes deeply to compose herself.
"Then let's tie her up and put her somewhere secure until morning," he proposes. "The storm should have cleared by then and we can phone the police."
There's an agonisingly long second before Jess nods jerkily in acceptance and Josh breathes out a sigh of relief. Ashley steps forward to help Jess lift Sam's unconscious form and suddenly Josh is left without a distraction.
He closes his eyes against the pain in his chest and tries to think of nothing at all.
xxx
Ashley stares down at Sam, slumped in her bonds on the wooden stool and tries not to feel betrayed. It's difficult though. She's still shaking slightly from the multiple traumas she's undergone this evening, and it turns out that the reason for this is that one of her best friends thought she needed to be punished for a prank she didn't even take part in –
Beside her, Jess snarls, low and menacing in response to Sam's question about Mike. "You fucking know what happened to him, you –"
"Jess," Ashley says wearily, still automatically defending her friend. "She's ill. She probably doesn't even know what she's saying." It's true, even if she has never felt less like defending Sam – but then her emotional response to what Sam's done and logical thought are two entirely different things. However, she tamps down her bitterness and betrayal as best she can and focuses on containing Jess' rage so that no one else dies tonight.
Please just let this night be over.
xxx
It's officially the worst night of Matt's life.
Between nearly dying from falling from the fire tower and nearly dying from falling into a bottomless chasm (saved only by an incredibly lucky accident when a cable got tangled around his calf), he is now at risk of dying from starvation, trapped underground.
It's alright, he consoles himself wryly. That's at least a week or two off yet.
Then he finds Hannah's head and any shaky humour he'd managed to scrape together deserts him. He scrambles away, retching and trying not to lose his dinner, horror and revulsion and guilt turning his stomach.
Oh God, oh God, shit, shit, shit, oh God –
And of course, proving that the universe has a sick, twisted sense of humour, this is also when he discovers that he and the decapitated head of a girl who had once been his friend are not the only things down here in the dark.
(He's saved by a woman, tough and battle-scarred, one eye glassy and clouded. She wields a flamethrower with an ease born of long practice and throws him a bag of flares that saves his life, but not his shoulder, from the teeth of the wendigo.)
xxx
The relief is indescribable when Matt falls through the front door, panicked and bloodied but alive.
Josh leaps forward with Chris and they guide him to sit down on the sofa, everyone listening as he blurts out his story, and a clamour of voices fills the air in response, disbelief and shock echoing around the room.
They are cut off by a thunderous knocking and mere minutes later, Ashley and Jess are casually disarmed and herded back to the circle of sofas by an intimidating woman in a bulky green coat, a flamethrower tank strapped to her back and a scowl on her face. "Listen up," she instructs. "I'm only gonna say this once."
Josh listens and wishes he hadn't.
xxx
The Flamethrower Woman doesn't come back with Ashley and neither does Sam (because monsters are real oh God, oh God).
Ashley just shakes her head in response to Josh's question, pale-faced, her knuckles white on the shotgun. Chris pulls her into a hug and Josh turns away, the pain in his chest splitting him wide open.
Then Chris sees Matt's bite and everything dissolves into chaos again. Josh pleads for Jess to put the gun down and she does, eventually, and he breathes out a shaky sigh of relief; his heart feels like it's going to beat right out of his chest with the stress of all this.
Jess leaves after a while, determined to retrieve the cable car key and get everyone off the mountain, and Josh's nerves wind tighter as the group splinters further.
Please God let us all get out of this alive.
xxx
Jess is running through the darkened sanatorium with monsters on all sides and the shotgun feels like it's alive in her hands. Her nerves sing with terror and adrenaline and her shoulder is numb from recoil of the shotgun but she's alive, she's winning, Wolfie running ahead of her, leading her through the dark.
She escapes the building and the burning wendigo follows her to the entrance to the mine; Josh appears out of nowhere just in time to save her life, swinging a shovel and decapitating the creature before it can kill her. "Thanks," she pants, climbing to her feet and in return he offers her a smile with no trace of humour in it.
They set off into the mines, looking for Sam and the key that is their ticket off this cursed mountain. What they find instead is proof of Matt's words and worse, the reason why Hannah's head is detached from her body.
Josh is barely aware of Jess' hand pressed against his back in a futile attempt at comfort as he retches and heaves until there is nothing left in his stomach because his sisters died in this mine, one immediately, and the other a slow death of spirit.
And now she is a monster, the bright-eyed sarcastic girl who loved baseball and butterflies and pranking the shit out of her friends with her big brother – that girl is a flesh-eating monster with no memories of ever being the person she once was.
Jess coaxes him to his feet and he numbly wipes his mouth on the back of his hand and stumbles on, locking his thoughts away deep down inside himself. Later. He could have a breakdown later. Right now, they had to focus on surviving.
Against all odds, they find Sam, and her dazed, uncomprehending expression digs merciless fingers into the raw wound in Josh's heart. "We're getting out of here, Sam," he says, taking the opposite arm from Jess to guide her out of here. "I promise."
(He is made a liar less than ten minutes later.)
xxx
Emily narrows avoids taking a shovel to the head, and then barely catches Mike before he hits the ground. "Jesus Christ, Mike, what the hell happened?" she asks, staring at his deep wounds and general state of undress.
He shakes his head slightly, clearly exhausted from the simple effort of swinging the shovel. "I – I –" his voice is scratchy and he winces, coughing. "There was a monster –"
Emily listens with growing dismay as he rambles and realises he must have sustained some sort of head wound in addition to the other injuries littering his body. "Okay, Mike," she cuts him off brusquely. "It's fine. I'll get us out of here and then we'll phone for a doctor."
Provided we can evade the maniac too, shit, this is just one disaster after another.
This is proven all too accurate mere moments later when she discovers that Mike's claims of a monster on the mountain were not the result of a head wound. You have got to be fucking kidding me, she snarls internally, clamping Mike's shaking form close to her chest to keep him still as the milky-eyed creature prowls through the dark behind them. Someone is having a colossal joke at our expense.
She does get them out of there though, just as dawn breaks over the horizon, so at least God didn't get to hear the fucking punchline.
Take that, asshole.
xxx
It's like a demented game of musical statues, Josh thinks, terror and totally inappropriate laughter bubbling up in his throat as he watches the rigidly still forms of his friends and the fight between mythological creatures that is happening all around them.
Then one of them bursts the gas pipe near the fireplace and Jess catches his eye a moment later, widening her own significantly. He cottons on to her plan in a matter of seconds and with their combined efforts everyone makes it out of the lodge alive.
Josh lies in the snow, feeling the pain of his fire-blistered back so distantly that it's almost as though it belongs to another person. In sharp contrast, the pain in his chest is like an agonising lump of molten lead, because everyone made it out of the lodge, but not everyone is going to make it off the mountain.
I'm so sorry, Sam. I'm so sorry.
As the clatter of helicopter blades echoes off the surrounding mountains, as his parents' lodge is consumed by the blazing inferno, as a brilliant scarlet dawn at last breaks over the horizon; Josh finally lets go and feels the first tears run down his cheeks, closing his eyes as his vision blurs.
I'm so sorry.
A/N: So yeah. I have absolutely no idea how Josh stole the show here, but least the girls got to be the ones wielding the weapons for once. ^_^ (Main attraction for me, not gonna lie.) But then I suppose he is the one who lost the most, plus Sam is the mentally unstable person in this one and it's his perspective on the girl he loves turning out to be the 'maniac' terrorising them, so…
Also, I realised afterwards that the Stranger is the only one who I actually genderbent rather than swapped but I liked the idea too much to change it, so yeah. (Plus there wasn't really anyone for him to swap with.) xD Oh well!
Thanks for reading! Please let me know if you liked it or not. :)