Chapter Text
It had been a little over a year, but it wasn’t getting any easier. In fact, the more time that dragged by, the harder it seemed to make a full recovery. The physical wounds had healed, scabbing over and flaking away into scars. But the emotional trauma had lingered on, festering and oozing like an open sore, bubbling over until it tainted everything good in her life.
The hardest part was that she wasn’t sure how to make it stop. She’d tried to cover the wounds, applying so much pressure to herself that cut off nearly all circulation with the outside world. She had applied a million tourniquets, but inside, she was still bleeding.
She put distance between herself and Woodsboro. She had to, because everything reminded Tara of her. She thought that New York City would be better - she could move away with her sister and focus on her studies while they rebuilt their relationship. And she had done both of those things. She loved Sam, and they were slowly starting to get to know each other again. And she was pre-law but taking film classes to keep sane - something she, admittedly, decided to major in large part because of what had happened. But it wasn’t the same. She was missing something, something that she couldn’t talk about with anyone in fear they’d judge her. She missed her best friend.
Amber had done terrible things, things that hurt Tara every single second of every single day. She’d destroyed her faith in people, ruining her ability to trust anyone. She made her doubt herself and everyone around her. She never felt safe, not completely. She was forever looking over her shoulder, waiting for the next stab to land. She was filled with anxiety and dread and anger and a million other emotions.
But mostly she was sad. She was in mourning.
Tara had spent the better part of the year absolutely loathing Amber for what she had done. She betrayed her – betrayed all of them. She lied to their faces every day about who she really was and what she wanted with them. She’d led a double life that resulted in an absolute massacre, and Tara hated that she hadn’t took notice of any of the signs. She hated that she had been so fucking naïve.
And she hated that she still missed her – or at least who she had been with her. Amber Freeman had been her best friend in the world since they were kids. She was the one person she trusted with every single aspect of her life. Tara had spilled her guts about how much she’d missed Sam and how bad it hurt when her entire family seemed to disappear before her very eyes. She’d cried to the girl night every night, finding comfort in her patience and compassion. Now she wasn’t sure how much of their friendship had been a lie.
But even so, wasn’t a lie better than how she felt now? There was no more comfort to be had. There was no more laughter over the phone as they made inside jokes about the world around them to cope. There was nothing but a void left behind where Amber took a piece of Tara Carpenter with her to the grave. Now she was a mere shell of the happy-go-lucky girl she had been only a year before. She was broken.
She couldn’t tell if that was because of what Amber had done to her or because of what she had had to do to her. She closed her eyes and could still feel how it felt to pull the trigger.
Bang!
Her eyes squeezed closed tighter, as if it might make the memory sting less – as if it might take it away completely.
Tara missed her. She missed everything about her, and more than anything, she wished she could go back and change things. She wished she could pinpoint the exact moment where she could have stopped Amber’s plan from going forward. When had things changed? They were friends for almost their whole lives before the betrayal; when did she decide it wasn’t worth protecting anymore?
She would often replay their time together and dissect each moment to try to determine if there were any signs. Was she just that naïve? Did Amber ever really care? How could she fake all those years and friendship and the hint of something more?
These questions ate at her, picked her apart from the inside out, bursting through her pores. She knew she couldn’t change anything, but that didn’t stop her from begging whatever powers that be to let her try. It didn’t stop her from pleading with Amber for answers she knew weren’t coming.
It was a cold October night in New York City the night everything changed for the second time. It was the kind of crisp autumn night Amber always loved but never got to really experience living in California. The trees got so beautiful in New York. Though there weren’t as many as she would have liked, the few that were there were so vibrant that it almost made up for it. Tara could picture Amber trying to capture their beauty with her retro camera, getting all excited when she got the shot she wanted. It was a thought that made her smile before a pang of longing ate at her, reminding her that she was gone.
Tara was walking alone on the street at night, something she knew Sam would have freaked out over had she known. Her older sister was still handling her like she was glass, something that annoyed her to no end. She absolutely adored Sam and appreciated her protectiveness, but it was difficult being treated like a victim all the time. Even though it wasn’t intended to, it felt like her sister didn’t trust her or believe in her to be able to make good decisions and take care of herself. That would be fine, but Tara, at her core, was aching for someone to just believe in her again.
Someone to believe in her like Amber did.
She sighed and readjusted her headphones as she waited to cross the street. Mindy always gave her so much shit for waiting to walk even when cars weren’t coming, but she figured she’d survived too many near misses as it was and didn’t want to test luck. So she waited.
As the pedestrian sign lit up and she stepped into the crosswalk, something bizarre happened. She had been listening to something upbeat, but the song changed part way through without warning. She whipped out her phone to try to change it back but stopped immediately at the band’s name. It was playing “I Found” by Amber Run. She had specifically not added anything with that name to her playlist; it was too painful to see it.
Her face scrunched up in confusion, but she didn’t get the chance to change it before she heard a familiar voice shout, “Run!” She looked up in shock. Across the street, in the outfit she had been buried in, was Amber Freeman, and she was yelling desperately.
The screams pitched and shifted into the sound of a car horn. She looked up just in time to see the car barreling towards her. She ran towards Amber without thinking, but it was too late. She felt herself get clipped and get tossed through the air, colliding into something as her vision went black.
Tara had seen a lot of movies where someone had had a near-death experience and assumed it was just some convoluted way people in Hollywood wrote scripts. The last time she was injured badly enough to nearly die, it was different. There weren’t flashes of anything but fear and adrenaline. This was something else entirely.
Visually, she saw nothing – not the way Hollywood showed it anyway. She wasn’t outside her body in the sense that she could see and hear the commotion and step through witnesses. No, it wasn’t like that at all. She felt like she was floating at first, gently drifting from her body, but she couldn’t quite see herself. She was there and not there at the same time, stuck in some hellish limbo where she was acutely aware of what was going on.
She had been hit by a car. She knew that much, because she was able to surmise that’s what had happened. She knew she wasn’t in control of her body, but not in the sense that she was physically paralyzed. No, it felt like she was physically nothing. It was almost as if she were in a state of dreaming, but she was in total control of her thoughts and perceptions. She couldn’t necessarily see the scene of her body, but she was vaguely aware of what was going on somehow.
After her initial confusion, she immediately tried to wake up. Surely, this was far too strange to be reality. She must have simply fallen asleep at the library again without realizing it, and this was her body’s way of telling her she needed to get up and go home. It wouldn’t be the first time.
Only she couldn’t wake up. She could somehow envision what was happening, but it was vague, playing out like a daydream – there and not all at once. Reality was just out of reach, but it was ever so suffocating.
“What the fuck is going on?” she thought to herself frantically. She wanted answers, but there was only her in a sea of darkness and dimmed insight.
She didn’t hear a voice respond, but she somehow simply understood a response, as if she were suddenly remembering the answer.
You’re not dead.
“Okay, good to know. So what the fuck is this?”
You’re in limbo. You have the opportunity to stay or go.
“I’ll go wherever Sam is.”
I can’t let you do that.
“Please! She’s going to be so fucking worried about me. We’re supposed to be having dinner tonight. If I don’t show up…”
This is the in-between, a place for those who have tethers to tragedies and missteps of the past. Here, you are given the choice to go back and fix what tethers you, or you may move on to fight for your life. There is no third choice.
“Fix things?” she asked. “What the fuck does that even mean? What am I fixing? And how do I fix it?”
To fix things, you must go back and alter the outcome.
“The outcome to what? What is that even supposed to mean?” she wanted to yell, but there was no control over anything. She could think, but she couldn’t do anything else. “Hello?”
Something you begged to change a thousand times or more.
There was a pause. “Amber?” When no response came, she again asked, “Do you mean changing what Amber did?”
Yes.
“I don’t understand,” she admitted.
Amber is your tether. You were struck down because you left Woodsboro to come to New York. Had you not been here at this exact moment, you would not be fighting for your life now, a battle you will likely lose.
She felt dread fill her entire being.
“Bullshit. If I stayed in Woodsboro, I would have… I wouldn’t be here now either. I wouldn’t have been able to take it.” She wanted to settle down, but she was confused and agitated. It was like a fever dream, but it felt real somehow. “Besides, Amber’s dead! I can’t change anything she did. I wish I could.”
You wished for this every day. Now you can.
“Fuck that! I need to see Sam. I need to tell her I’m okay! Please.”
Go back to Woodsboro and stop what happened. Prevent the tragedy that took your tether. You can prevent it. Or you can accept your fate and give up. You can move on to the next plateau and decide between life and death.
Tara Carpenter did not give up. She couldn’t. She had been a fighter her entire life. Yes, she was small, but it was because of this that she always felt she had so much more to prove. She fought harder to protect herself. She hardened herself more to take more damage. She didn’t give up; she couldn’t. She was Tara fucking Carpenter.
And besides, if whatever this bizarre experience was telling her was right, she had a chance to change things and stop Amber from…
“How? How can I fix it?”
You will be given a second chance. You will go back in time to a day where you could have made an impact on her decision.
“I don’t know when that day would be! I have no fucking clue when I could have changed things. I didn’t even know what she was planning.”
Yes, but there were signs – signs you can look for now that you know the outcome.
“How do I change her mind? I’ve asked myself that a million times.”
You have to find a way without alluding to Amber that you know her plan.
“As if she’d believe me if I told her,” she wanted to scoff.
If you choose to go back and fix things, there is no turning back. If you fail to change the outcome and prevent the massacre, you will die instantly. But if you succeed, you will be granted life without question, with those alive you manage to keep alive should you choose to go back. You will get one chance and only one chance to make things right.
“Fuck!” She had to process whatever the fuck was going on, and she had to do it quickly. She was being told that she could either fight for her life and either live or die, or she could do the one thing she’d been praying to get the chance to do for the past year: she could try to save Amber Freeman and stop the massacre. The catch to getting her wish was that if she failed, she was dead with no second chance. If she succeeded though… Would that mean that Wes, his mom, Liv, Dewey, Deputy Clay, and even Vince would get to live? Would Amber? Wasn’t that worth the risk?
But what about Sam? If she died, she knew it would destroy her sister. And without the trauma, would their bond be as close as it was? Would her sister even be in her life?
“What about Sam? Will she be in my life?”
You must survive the first attack. Your attack will be attempted - the attack that set everything into motion. This cannot be avoided. As such, yes, your sister will return to Woodsboro. But be warned, you will feel the physical pain all over again as well as any additional attacks that you are unable to prevent.
She would have gulped if she could. She could fix things and have the two most important people back in her life, but she had to let herself get stabbed again. It had been, by far, the most physically painful experience of her life. She struggled for the last year with what came after that attack. Her wounds wouldn’t heal, and there were still days she’d wake with a deep pain in her hand or abdomen that wouldn’t go away. Could she really relive that pain?
But if she chose not to go back, would it be easier to live? She never thought she’d be dying to live. She had spent the past year battling suicidal thoughts, wondering if the world would be better without her in it, and feeling empty. Now that it came down to it, she was finding that maybe she cared more than she realized, if only for her sister’s sake. Would her odds be better of making it without going back? Could she fight between life and death and win?
“What if I don’t go back? What happens?” she asked.
You will live, or you will die. Your actions will impact little. It will not be your choice to make, though you may to tip the odds in your favor.
She stared into the void, seeing nothing but feeling the crushing weight of everything. She could change things; she could go back and save her friends. She could see Amber again, the way she remembered her before devastation struck. She could listen to her laugh and hear the soft voice she spoke only when they were alone together. She hated to admit it, but that was the deciding factor, as selfish and stupid as it made her feel.
“I’ll do it. I accept,” she blurted out. She could lie to everyone else that she was over what had happened – over what she lost, but she knew there was a chance she may never be. If she could change things and save seven lives, it would certainly fucking help. “Wait, do I have to prevent Richie from dying?”
No. You simply have to stop Amber Freeman from killing anyone she originally murdered.
Fuck. That might be easier said than done. Richie hadn’t exactly done much of the heavy lifting. It had been Amber who killed most everyone as far as she knew. Could she prevent her from her cruelty? She wasn’t sure. But she had to try.
She knew she should hate the girl. Sometimes she did, especially if she thought about her for too long. But she couldn’t help but feel a pang of excitement at the chance to get back the piece of herself she was missing. If she really did have the chance to turn back time, she would take it in a heartbeat to have that connection back for even just a day.
“I accept. I want to go back. Please.”
There was no response from whoever the hell else had been talking to.
“Did you hear me? I want to go back.”
Nothing.
“Take me back! What the fuck!”
She felt herself lurch forward, as if she were on some sort of carnival ride that suddenly decided to move without warning. No longer was she floating; she was falling – fast. She was plummeting towards the ground, but she could still see only darkness. Her body was someplace else entirely; she was energy – everything and nothing all at once.
Before she had a chance to process what was happening, she was shifting, crashing into something.
She gasped and opened her eyes. Staring back at her was Amber Freeman, whose face was twisted in concern. She had envisioned seeing her again a million times or more. She pictured how she might react and what she might do. Sometimes, she felt like she’d punch her in the face for what she’d done. Other times, she thought she’d probably feel too relieved to feel the anger she reasonably should at the sight of the girl.
“Are you okay? Is it your asthma?” Amber asked her in a panic.
Tara blinked hard at the sound of her voice. Was this really happening? Had she somehow made a pact with some nothingness in the void to go back in time and change things? This was real?
“Amber?” she breathed in disbelief.
“Hang on! I’ll go get it!”
She returned within seconds, holding out the spare inhaler Tara had started leaving at her place years before. She knew she should have been terrified to see the girl; she had stabbed her repetitively and nearly killed her, after all. She had betrayed her and ruined her life. But there was a small tugging of desperation to hug the girl.
“Thank you,” she said, but her voice was shaking.
The taller girl guided her to the bed and sat her down, crouching down just a little to meet her eyes. “Are you okay? You’ve been acting super weird.”
Tara could feel her eyes starting to well, and she cursed herself for it. The girl in front of her couldn’t understand the significance of this moment. She had no clue that less than an hour ago, she had been in a future without her. She looked down at her hand; there was no scar. This Amber hadn’t stabbed her yet – hadn’t betrayed her. She really had found some way back to the past.
Or maybe it was all a drug induced dream as she lay dying in the future. Either way, she wasn’t going to take it for granted.
Without warning, she stood up and wrapped her arms around the taller girl. There was just a second of hesitation before Amber returned the hug. She knew Amber wasn’t huge on physical touch, but the pair had always been touchy-feely with one another. It was that closeness she sometimes craved most. Tara buried her head into her shoulder for just a moment, taking in how it felt to be in those arms again. She still smelled like honey and almond. And a little bit like some type of alcohol.
“I’m okay. I’ve just missed you,” she admitted as she pulled away.
The Freeman girl’s lips quirked up in amusement. “We’ve literally been hanging out for the past three hours. I left the room for five minutes, you nerd.”
Tara tried to remember the rules, but everything was a blur. All she knew was that she had a chance to fix things and that the weird ass powers that be had chosen this day as a day she could do so.
“Can’t a girl miss her best friend? Damn,” she played it off.
“Well, get ready to miss me more. I’ve got some shit to do later tonight that I’m kind of dreading,” Amber confessed.
Tara tried to remember what she had done the first time around. Had she asked her about it?
“What kind of stuff? And why are you dreading it?” she asked with a frown.
“Just this movie marathon with a guy I met online over Discord.”
It had been there the whole time. She told her the truth, and now that it was out there, she did vaguely remember something about a guy Amber had been talking to. She mentioned it in passing, so it flew under the radar.
“Ew,” she started to say but caught herself. She forced herself to swallow down what she knew. She couldn’t react too strongly or it might ruin everything. What would a friend say with no gift of hindsight? “You like this guy?”
“I mean, I guess. He’s a little older, but he seems sweet. He’s kind of pushy, though.”
What had she told her before? Had she encouraged her to give him a try? She felt like she probably had. She remembered feeling a pang of jealousy at the time, which she overcompensated for by being super supportive.
“Well, fuck that. Blow him off. Have a movie marathon with me,” she almost begged, praying she wouldn’t catch on to her desperation. “We can get drunk and everything. We can even watch Stab! It’s been a while since we’ve watched those.”
Amber’s head snapped up at the suggestion. “I thought you hated those movies.”
“Hate’s a strong word. They just weirded me out when we were younger, because of all the horror stories about Sidney Prescott. But I feel like I’d get them more now. I’d probably even like them.” She nudged the taller girl playfully and gave a dramatic pout. “What do you say? Blow off whatshisface and hang out with your best friend in the entire world?”
Amber’s lips quirked up in that cute way that told Tara that she was excited by the idea but didn’t want to show it.
“I don’t think he’d handle me blowing him off super well,” she admitted.
Tara searched Amber’s eyes. There was a sadness there that you’d blink and miss before it was replaced by her usual icy demeanor.
“He’s not dangerous or anything, right?”
“No, no. Definitely not. Just one of those assholes who thinks he’s charming enough to always get what he wants.”
Lies. Of course Richie Kirsch was fucking dangerous. Granted, he barely killed anyone and made Amber do most of the work, but he was unhinged – a total manbaby.
“I could join you guys then. Please? I’m not ready to stop hanging out,” she pleaded, playing up her puppy dog eyes.
While Amber was still debating, she cautiously grabbed Amber’s hand, an action that seemed to surprise the taller girl. She needed to get this right. She wasn’t sure what exactly she could have changed that night, but she distinctly remembered going home. It was hard to forget, because it was the first night her text messages to Amber ever went unanswered.
“Fuck it. I’ll just tell him we’ll have to postpone it.” She caught Tara’s eye and smiled. “I think time with my best friend is way more important tonight.”
Tara beamed and threw her arms around the girl that she knew would go on to stab her seven times and kill a sizable portion of their friend group. In that moment, though, it didn’t matter. Maybe that made her naïve or some sort of evil person, but she didn’t care about what was to come. She’d lived every day without her best friend for a little over a year, and she fucking missed her.
Maybe morality was grey and there was no right way to feel. Or maybe she was just searching for reasons to excuse her delight at seeing the person she’d loved for so many years – the person she’d been closest to in the world. Either way, she had made the first move towards fixing things. She just had to hope it was enough to set their path in a different direction.
By the second Stab movie, which was far inferior to the first, Tara and Amber were cuddled under a blanket Amber’s Mom had sewn when she was going through some sort of midlife crisis. It was a disgustingly ugly blanket with a misshapen kitten on it that looked more like a bunny. It was always proudly on display in their living room unless guests were coming over, because even Mrs. Freeman had to admit that it was tacky as hell. Still, Tara and Amber had grown up huddling under that blanket for warmth, and it had become a major component of their relationship.
“I like it cold,” Amber would always insist stubbornly when prompted to turn up the heat. Tara secretly never minded that it felt like a refrigerator in the Freeman house; it just gave her an excuse to snuggle up to her best friend.
“Do you ever think about killing people?” Tara blurted out without thinking. Whoa, she needed to walk that back. “I mean – “
“Sometimes, yeah, I guess. Just normal stuff,” Amber said with a shrug.
Oh, just normal stuff. Like stabbing your best friend seven times and breaking her leg in multiple places. Girly things like that, you know?
“Like give me scenario.”
“Okay, like if someone hurt you, I’d fucking kill them. Or if I had to kill someone in self defense, I would.”
Tara sighed in relief.
“I think I’d kill David Schwimmer, because his acting fucking sucks in this,” she tried to joke. But then she immediately started worrying it might give her ideas to kill Dewey, since that’s who David was playing. “Just kidding! Dewey’s great. And David is just a peach in real life.”
Amber eyed her suspiciously. “You’re acting so fucking weird tonight.” She leaned over and placed her hand on Tara’s head, causing a blush to form immediately. “No fever, so the diagnosis is that you’re just fucking weird,” she said with a laugh.
“Only with you,” Tara admitted, daring to shift just ever so closer to the girl beside her. “Sorry, I’m cold.”
The taller girl immediately looked concerned. She scooped the girl up and shifted her so she was practically on her lap.
Fuck. Were they always that close? Was Tara just fucking touch starved, or did it feel like something else could be happening?
“My hero,” she swooned.
She couldn’t ignore the electricity in the air and found herself wondering if Amber felt it, too. Was it always there? Surely if it had been, she would have remembered it, right?
Amber wrapped her arm around the smaller girl and leaned their heads together. Tara was terrified of scaring her off, as if she were some deer grazing, so she stayed in the same exact position, not daring to move until she fell asleep.
As the two fell asleep on the couch to the sound of violent screaming on Amber’s tv, it was hard not to feel like maybe something had changed that night. It felt like it was a step in the right direction.