#ummmm zero is a lesbian. itcounts.

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26: Watching Bloodshed

It's literally just Tiff watching the 1983 movie Camp Bloodshed.

Word count: 984

“If I have to eat another drop of soup, I’m going to lose my mind.” She pushes the broccoli-cheddar tupperware to the edge of the armrest.

“You already did. That’s what got us here.” 

Tiff rolls her eyes at her sister on the other side of the couch, where she’s fiddling with the remote like it’s going to do anything. “Yeah, well. At least you get to sleep in a bed for the next few weeks.” 

“I’m not the one who chose to live in a shed.” 

“You volunteered. Lovingly.” 

“There was no love to it.” Andy reaches over her and takes the bowl of soup. At least it isn’t going to waste this way. They just need to make sure their aunt doesn’t find out— or that Drew doesn’t walk in and stare disapprovingly. 

Tiff frowns at the TV. There’s something wrong with this VHS. It keeps glitching out. It’s her only copy of the 1984 horror classic Camp Bloodshed. She found it while she was clearing out the back rooms of the Book Nook.

She sighs. “This blows. I’ll see what’s up with the tape later. Let’s just watch something else.” 

“What else would we watch?” 

“Uh— I don’t know. Something.” Tiff pauses, considers the VHS tapes lining the shelves around the TV, moved up higher so Kepler can’t reach and ruin them. “You’ve never seen Peter Pan, right? Put that on.” 

“I’ll never regain my credibility.” 

“You never had credibility. You moved here as the sister of Tiff Sheridan.”

“I suppose you have less, then.” 

“Absolutely. My reputation is in the gutter.” That’s by design. 

They keep watching the movie anyway. She focuses more on the screen than on her reputation. It happened a while ago, but she’s still thinking about the scene where Ace and Blake are overseeing archery. They didn’t know it was going to go so wrong when they set out to do what they were doing. They had no clue that the kid would die in the rainstorm. They had no idea that the mad scientist would steal Blake Abbott’s stupid freaking robe. 

She wonders what went through his head, when it all set in. He’s not a character she should see any relation in. Blake Abbott is a weepy young man who ran around the woods oblivious in a wizard robe while people died around him, who turned hard at the last second, who spent the last of it terrified of Carrie Coffinberry getting hurt before it ever set in that his childhood best friend had died. He was wounded; he was terrified; he was a silly little nerd who had to grow up over the course of one night and got his silly little wizard robe stolen at the end of it. Tiff squints at the screen while the rain keeps falling on pools of blood and mechanical murderers. 

“Whatever the hell you did to yourself isn’t helping that reputation, by the way.” Drew’s voice is miserable and unexpected from over the back of the couch. He must not have slept last night. Tiff certainly didn’t. 

She barely looks at him over the back of the couch. It hurts to bend that way. “I’m not going to tell you. Worry about your new brother or something.” 

“I have to worry about my old sister.” 

“I’m not old.” 

“You’re eighteen. You’re practically in the ground.” 

“I envy your memory of whatever the hell we were talking about in Fort Reverence.” She flicks a bit of lint at him. “Just go check on Jeb or something.” 

He throws it back. “I already did. He’s on the roof.” 

“Fuck. That’s my place.” 

“Not anymore. Now you’re on the couch. Because…” 

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you, so there’s no point.” 

“Humor me.” He raises his eyebrows like a challenge. 

“I found an extraterrestrial parasite in the woods and let it crawl down my throat. I did it for science and I would do it again.” 

Challenge accepted, he lowers his eyebrows and sets his voice back to neutral. “You’re right. That’s entirely unbelievable.” 

“You’d think almost dying because of your undead great-aunt’s fucked-up horse would change your mind on the supernatural, but whatever.” 

On the screen, Blake Abbott spins through the woods in his deep-blue-and-silver wizard’s cloak, looking for the child, oblivious to the carnage happening in the camp while he’s away. He stops in the rain to look up at foreboding clouds. Tiff knows it’s the moment where the protagonist role switches from Zero to a group of three: the capable jock, the idealistic nerd, and the sweetheart goth. 

She watches it with her hands in the blanket, tying knots around her fingers. She should be doing something productive while she’s recovering from all this bullshit, like her homework or drawing up weapon plans, but the truth is that she has just been laying here. It’s torture. 

Andy swallows a chunk of wet broccoli. “She’s right. I was there. Kind of. It went down her throat. She threw up black sludge.” 

“Not you too,” Drew laments, pushing up off the back of the couch to stand up straight. “We can’t have more people on her side about this.” 

“She’s right! There’s no side! She’s literally just correct!” 

He clearly doesn’t think so. “Andy, quit eating Tiff’s soup.” 

“She wasn’t going to eat it!” 

“I wasn’t,” Tiff agrees, more captivated by the glitching violence on-screen than by the conversation at hand. 

Zero got her hand cut off and kept fighting until the very end. Carrie saw everyone she cared about (and everyone she hated) brutally murdered. Presumably, after the events of the original canon, they all got through it: funerals, breaking the news, and putting away the Great Wizard Boranthemus. 

She’s no Blake Abbott, of course. Tiff Sheridan will never put away her wizard’s cape. The lab coat is still on the back of her door.