title: we're future kings and riot queens
fandom: riverdale
characters: archie andrews, jughead jones, veronica lodge, betty cooper
information: gen | 675 words | oneshot
summary: for one shining moment, we were just kids (or: A boy dies, a town mourns.)
( when you're young, you just run )
A boy dies, a town mourns.
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.
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Every town has its own folklore and secrets to tell: myths and legends, origin stories and fallen heroes.
Riverdale was once built on the saplings of the maple syrup industry, forged from the steel resolve of two powerful families. They staked out the land near Sweetwater River because it sparkled blue like liquid diamonds.
Some years later, they will look to the history books to explain how the sapphire blue river turned ruby red: how the river that was once sweet and crystal-clear bled out like the boy with flames in his hair.
.
.
.
"What was it like when you first got here?"
Veronica Lodge looks into the depths of her chocolate milkshake and bites down on the red-white straw. Her lips are tinted a rich red and glossed with half-formed quips.
"Complicated," she replies. No other word quite fits.
She reaches toward her collarbone, by instinct, to touch the pearls secured around her neck. Her fingers tangle with the white orbs and she feels safe. Choked up, but safe.
.
.
.
Nobody asks how the Blossoms are doing anymore. Nobody wonders how Cheryl is faring now that her fraternal half rests a few feet below ground and she continues to tread lace and destruction upon the earth.
They will never outrun the small-town lull, the suffocating early morning fog, or the whispers of a young life gone wrong. No matter how many lies go in print or bridges are burned or families fall to ruin, two facts remain simple.
Two simple facts that brought Riverdale to its knees.
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.
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A boy died.
Someone pulled the trigger.
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don't you understand? nothing this bad was ever supposed to happen here.
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.
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Jughead Jones can't bring himself to finish his cheeseburger. It's a new thing for him, the sensation where he can't quite stomach his surroundings.
At the end of the day, he was the one who held all the cards, the only one with enough foresight and common sense to unravel the great Riverdale mystery.
He cracks his knuckles and reaches for his laptop, aches for it.
"Jughead: 1, Riverdale: 0."
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.
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If you listened closely at the river that morning, you would have heard a gunshot.
(boom)
Then another.
the boy is dead.
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oh, but that boy could have been you
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Archie Andrews tightens his grip on the sling of his black guitar case and hangs his head down. The contents of his back pocket include two guitar picks, a broken pencil, and dreams further than the converses on his feet can take him.
He ignores his heartbeat, the anxious thump that still sounds like disproving looks and reality checks and are you sure this is what you want?
Last he checked, yes.
Yes to becoming a starving musician; and yes to leaving behind the love and the lust and the triangle of broken hearts; and another yes to getting the hell away from Riverdale.
When his moral compass stopped pointing north, Archie learned how to say no.
.
.
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Pop's no longer feels the way it once did. Loose, carefree beneath the fluorescence of a retro diner. They are no longer young royalty sitting in a booth and laughing away their troubles into the late hours of the night.
Nothing ever could have kept the darkness at bay.
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.
.
Betty Cooper wishes she could talk to someone. She feels as she always does: quietly wasting away in unnoticed rage, screaming loudly and soundlessly with a raw throat and burning eyes.
If anyone dares to rattle her cage, she will bite. Her ponytail may be slick and her nail beds may be gnawed, but she is blonde spitfire. She will torch those around her and take herself out in the process.
Her sharp fingernails dig into her palms and her atlas is stained with fresh blood. She paws at the edge of the tattered map, crisscrossed with half-formed escape plans and dead-end routes. She is never going to be able to get past the river: no one will.
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The world beckons them forward.
(get away from here)
It's what Jason tried to do.
(+ author's notes)
The scene at the end of 1x02 cemented the four of them as the fab four and I got serious The O.C. vibes from it. Riverdale exists in a post-Veronica Mars and post-The O.C. world and I am so in love with it.