Chapter 1: it's not time
He wonders if he's missed his last chance.
He hopes that's not the case but with who he is, and how he is, the final thread of any 'last chance' is probably gone. He's likely already lost the opportunity to clasp hope in his hands and hang onto it with all might - to stop his only son from slipping from his arms. Again.
The night is ablaze. Its sky scarred with a constant orange glow of angry embers and puffs of smoke. The riots blaze behind him, far back in the ruined streets of Riverdale, as his heart and helmet drop to the ground. He'd called Jughead's name into the dark and felt the panic creep through every splint of his spine as nothing, but the crackles of a dying fire answered him.
That is until a distant noise answers his call and FP dashes through the bushes at the edge of the clearing after what he hopes is not a phantom's sound. With his voice caught in his throat and his legs burning as he breaks into a run he finds he can't manage to call out anything but, "Hey!"
He sprints from the crackling fire of the Ghoulies' campground, through the darkness of the woods, hot on the tail end of cackling laughter and fleeing footsteps, but he knows he won't catch up.
Because he can't trace any of this back to a single moment.
He can't trace it back to the gang, or the town, or the murders. He can only trace it back to himself, his failures, and the moment a blurry faced nurse handed him a red-faced bundle and he soiled everything with his own two hands when realized he loved him.
He can only think that it's always been leading to this.
Rather than miss the thread leading to his son, he's been soaking every strand of their relationship in kerosene - year after year, mistake after mistake, turning a blind eye as the material eroded away.
As branches snap back and slap him across the face he can't help but think that he always knew it was a matter of time before everything went up in flames.
He's running from the flames, weaving in between the shadows of the woods for only a minute when does catch up to hear more manic laughter rise over the fleeing revs of bike engines. He just begins to work his voice to shout after them again, to maybe grab their throats and make them talk, when he comes slamming to a stop. The quick sprint has him huffing shallow bits of air as he spins his neck completely to his left.
His blood runs cold, a thick constant thumping pummels in his ears, drowning out his gasps and any remaining thoughts he had. He blinks and slinks a step forward to see what he caught in his peripheral - even though he already knows. He knows what the bundle of black is before his vision clears and his fingers nearly rupture from the pressure of his fists.
It's the nightmare he's had every night since Gladys placed a hand across her swollen stomach and told him it was a boy.
FP barely stumbles forward but with just his few steps he's close enough that the stench of blood is thicker than the smell of dirt and pine. He reaches down to grab the black fabric hanging loosely from the unmoving back and falters.
His knees wobble dangerously, his eyesight turns spotty, his fingers almost lose their grip.
His kid's been thrown to the side, abandoned like trash that was too heavy to carry, or not worth the trip. Limbs sprawled, and torso buried underneath a dirty shrub, his body so still that-
"Jughead," FP yanks him away from the tangle of branches so he can turn him over and see, so he can prove to himself it's not as bad as it seems. His hands pull the cold sticky limbs and unmoving torso into his lap, cradling them, like he did an eternity ago.
Even back then he was filled with terror.
But back then there were hands reaching for him, with pink skin and small cries and a steady thump beneath the chest FP could feel with just his thumb. This time there's nothing. This time his boy is quiet and unmoving. This time he catches the mess of shredded skin where an inked snake used to be.
"Jug," FP croaks, his thumb and fingers cupping Jughead's chin, forcing the limp head forward to face him. Jughead's face is lax and painted with a paleness, that even in the dark of night, FP knows will call for death. "Oh, fucking christ- christ, christ, no-"
He scrambles. Unsure of where to even begin. He wipes furiously at the blood dripping from the remaining flesh of Jughead's shoulder before feeling the skin of his palm soaking with it. He holds his hand still against the bloody wound instead and tries to speak with meaning.
"Come on, Jug," he hisses giving him a shake, "Come on now, come on." He slips a hand over the thin shirt of Jughead's chest. "It's-" He chokes, his throat stuttering closed when his palm feels nothing but the frozen indents of Jughead's ribs. FP throws himself down, an ear to the chest and then an ear over the mouth.
"Fuck, no, no, no, don't do this to me, please." But every god and prayer or begging from a broken father won't do a goddamn thing, because Jughead's heart is still and mouth unbreathing.
There's nothing left to do but throw himself off the edge.
Back into his days of drill sergeants and lost friends. Back into his days of vicious gang fights and overdose. Back when he could remove his mind and forget his soul and do what he knew had to be done.
He pushes to his knees, sets his shoulders, folds his hands over his son, and presses down to feel the once familiar crunch of ribs. But all at once it's different from his years of service and Serpent work.
His hands push down, and his mouth runs dry as he tries to talk over the exertion, "Come on, boy- come on," He gasps. "It's- It's me- It's-"
It's only when his back aches while he stretches down to breathe every bit of air he has into Jughead's lungs and soul that he realizes the reason why.
.
.
.
"Toni said it's south down the highway if- if you go right after the auto shop-"
A car door slams shut and an engine rumbles over the far-off police sirens and nearby hysteria of the night. It jostles her to glance outside to the reds and blues still painting the white sidings of her house. Though just that one look is all she can take before she's turning back to Archie in the driver's side as he pulls the car into drive.
Betty breathes in through her nose and tries to continue without choking.
"Go right at the auto shop then keep going until you see the exit. That's the fastest way."
Archie doesn't turn to her. He hits the acceleration and spins the wheel, fleeing from their neighborhood crime scene as he mumbles her own words back to her.
"Right at the auto shop then south down the highway…"
With a hand clenching the collar of her coat and the nightmare of her entire life fading from the side view mirror she loses the numbness she'd relied upon since her father had-
Since the blackhood had -
Feeling returns to her limbs and they begin to shake. Then her chest so she can feel it constrict painfully as she wheezes through a quickened inhale. Then her face, which burns with a single heavy tear.
A hand grasps her shoulder and she realizes she's shivering underneath it.
"It's gonna be okay, Betty," Archie says, fingers tightening around her coat in exchange for glancing away from the road. "Jughead's not stupid he wouldn't- and even if he tried to- which he wouldn't- you called and told FP so fast that he probably already found him so by the time we get there- so you shouldn't- I don't think we should get all worked up when we don't even-"
Betty yanks her shoulder from Archie's grip and curls up against the passenger door, "Just drive, Archie," she begs with a hiss.
"Okay… okay, sorry, I just…"
Betty doesn't answer. She leans back into her seat and prepares herself for the worst, because when the one person you can't live without calls to say goodbye on the same night when hell has descended, nothing but the worst can happen. Her whole world is falling apart so what's stopping the universe from doing the unthinkable.
The car vibrates with the strain of its speed as Archie races down the deserted roads of the night. Betty strains to think only of Jughead and his soft eyes and shy smiles and the way he can make everything better even when everything in her life and in her heart is at its worst.
She realizes those thoughts are mistakes because suddenly, she can't prepare for the worst at all and she hears Archie croak.
"I just can't take anymore of this."
She wishes she didn't know what he means.
.
.
.
The earth buckles beneath him.
FP rips himself away, eyes swirling through a smear of darkness and tears, throat burning from the blast of air that blew back into his lungs, and the second round of breaths he'd been forcing into Jughead's mouth, interrupted.
It's as if the seconds before - when he'd beaten Jughead's broken chest over and over again and felt himself begin to abandon his last bit of denial - were never there. The stagnant time he'd been stuck in, forced to beg over his only nightmare, is now a spinning dream. It's a reality he can hardly believe.
His entire world has erupted back to life with the spasming response of Jughead's body he never thought he'd see.
He simply can't keep up.
Wild eyes spin behind fluttering lids while hands grasp at the buttons of FP's shirt, though far too weak to hang on for very long, they only palm along his chest before flopping to the dusty ground. FP tries to catch them, but his hands are shaky, too busy trying to do something - do what, he doesn't know - at Jughead's chest, that seems to be fighting to fully expand.
"Easy, easy," he finds himself saying, over the hacking and whistling inhales, "You're-" He leans too close and the hands at the ground fling up to catch him in the face. "Shit! Alright! Alright, Jug- You're alright!" He calls out a little louder and moves a little faster, no longer swimming through a swampy filter of shock. The body squirming below and forcing out sounds like the painful squeaks an animal makes before it finally croaks, no longer seems like the devil's illusion.
"-ad..ur- uulp," Jughead hiccups, body stretching up by his chest so his head and heels dig back into the ground. FP answers like he understands.
"Yeah, I know, I know," he soothes, pushing the words through the lump filling the roof of his throat. There's an ache surging through his forearms and exhaustion radiating in his very soul but he reaches under Jughead's knees and neck, pulling him against his chest. "But you gotta breathe, boy- slow, slowly, not like-!"
He pulls his face away, dodging Jughead's flailing body as it buckles upwards in his arms.
"Come on, now," he complains, mostly to himself, locking his arm around Jughead's back to grab his arm and pin it down. The position gives him some control and time to breathe. His head bows down to rest an inch above Jughead's fluttering chest and he turns to see his son's face.
Jughead's eyes are blown, looking up to the sky, their whites shining with the little bit of light looming from the moon above. The blue of his irises is hard to see but the trembling of his chin, the tightening spasms of his throat, the open slack of his mouth, the dark pool that catches a bit of light before dribbling over his lips-
He realizes what's happening just as Jughead gurgles and the thick black pool in his mouth spills over his lips like a ruptured wine glass and down his already bloodied face.
"Shit, Jughead!"
FP loses the focus of his vision and depends on the feeling of skin beneath his hands to flip Jughead on his side. It's only with the slap of liquid to the ground and retching sound ripping from Jughead's throat that FP finds he can finally breathe again. Under his hands Jughead's body quakes each time he thrusts forward to vomit harshly - as if he were expelling every horror he'd seen and felt throughout the night.
FP moves a hand to Jughead's forehead, pushing back his matted bloodied bangs to the crown of his head. FP's other hand lamely wraps around Jughead's middle, and he wonders, if he were another man, another kind of father, would he have the strength to soothe his son beyond barely holding him above a pool of dirt and blood.
"..ur...ugh-!"
The retching begins to slow enough for Jughead to breathe again, and sob as well. FP lets his fingers splay wider across Jughead's scalp in response as Jughead splatters one last thing to the ground before going limp in his arms. The only indication that he's awake being the weak hiccups breaking around his exhausted breathing.
FP turns him gently backwards to lie across his lap again.
"Jug," he says, cradling him in the way he never thought he would again.
Jughead's eyes move from the sky to the corners where his eyelashes meet - or at least the right eye does, the left is so swollen FP can barely make out if it's open. But he knows both eyes are looking at him - not through him, not the way a dying man looks at a ghost no one can see, but the way a child looks surprised that someone came to their rescue - he knows by the way Jughead's steady, croaking for air skips.
"...a...d?" He whispers, face crumbling, and the disbelieving, yet untempered childlike relief clear in his features burns like a brand in FP's mind.
And then Jughead's are eyes slipping closed, body loose, but still warm, with a moving chest against FP own. FP's left with a thousand things he didn't say and didn't do and his worst nightmare still a reality in his arms.
He chokes twice before he bends around his son and weeps.
.
.
.
The truck swerves too quickly off the road to the grassy area before Betty's even sure it's the place they're supposed to go that she can barely register the group of black leather and bike wheels before she's blabbing out "Archie, Archie, Archie!" before more than their headlights are running over the standing figures.
She lurches from her seat and catches harshly against her seatbelt as Archie curses and hits the brakes, nearly too close to comfort she realizes and when she peers over the dashboard and sees the handlebars of a bike an inch away from disappearing under the truck's hood. The small crowd that had been waiting like sitting ducks in the truck's headlights have spread away like gently waves to Archie's side where a soft orange glow bleeds from the ground towards the black night sky.
A fire pit and dirt.
That was how Toni had described the Ghoulies' den.
Betty clicks the button of her seatbelt and pulls herself out of it, fighting the length of her bright pink petticoat for a moment when it tangles with the seatbelt strap, and then looks to see Archie already steps ahead of her, pulling keys from the ignition and pushing his door open. She flickers through her memory to a recall the sound or motion of Archie's seatbelt, but fails to find one as she yanks her own door open to follow after him though she exits just as he rounds the truck to her side. She guesses he never wore one for the drive.
Not that she's planning on chastising him. Not that she even cares.
It's only that the ground is dry beneath her feet, the moon is harsh and bright between its slit of clouds, and the thoughts inside her mind are spinning faster than the speed they raced here in. Archie slams her door while she jogs ahead, already scanning the crowd of turned heads and trying to busy her mind with any thought besides her creeping mantra of dread.
Jughead, Jughead, Jughead, Jughead.
Betty swerves around the crowd of Serpents, who make it easy, steering clear of her path and choosing to bunch in murmuring groups by their bikes. The orange flickering orb of light grows and grows until Archie's on her heels again, and the fire burning in a shallow barrel flickers behind a group of familiar figures.
Jughead. Jughead. Jughead.
He isn't there.
And gone is any inclination to stay optimistic.
The night has turned her into a pessimist. She can't bear to whisper reassurances in her head any longer, because fate always seems to have other plans.
The night has made her realize she's always been the girl whose father has the blood of her friends and loved ones on his hands. So next must be that she's been always cursed to suffer.
She can't fight her thoughts or calm her panic anymore. All she can do is freeze before the sparkling embers of a dying fire after sprinting around the last vehicle in her away, and see Toni, who spins around from behind Cheryl's back of scarlet red - two more people affected by the ripple started by her father's bloody hands, she remembers then. And as hard as she tries to stop it the mantra in her head slips to something worse again.
Fangs, Cheryl, Midge, Dr. Masters, Fred, Jughead, Jughead, Jughead.
All she can do is stand frozen before these people she let become victims of her father's crimes that she could've stopped.
All she can do to make a difference now is pray, and suddenly, she's not sure if someone like her, even should.
"Where is he?" She barely asks, eyes shooting from Toni's to Cheryl's to Sweetpea's, "Where's Jug?" They all look at her with wide and painful eyes. Cheryl closes in on Toni's side, seemingly to shield herself from whatever's about to come of this miserable night. Sweetpea, empty of the usual disdain and judgement in his eyes, only gives a small shake of his head.
"Guys…"
Archie's voice is low and cutting through her wild panic. It sends her neck swiveling to look at him where he stands behind her before turning to follow where his eyes are glued straight ahead. She meets the hazy opening of the woods, crowded with dry bushes and clouds of fog that have taken residence throughout night, and just as she takes any of it in the muffled steps of heavy boots on crunching leaves becomes easier and easier for her to hear.
Maybe in a different time, as a different girl, as the shadowed figure walks with a slow familiar pace she could cling to a smeared, ruined, and forgotten piece of hope. Maybe as the pressure thudding against her skull halts for a cold rush of numbness as FP walks with a body dangling from his arms she could look away and shield her eyes
Maybe she could do anything besides stand stiff and stare at the bloodied limbs in FP's arms as they swing lifeless through the night's dead air. Instead, she does nothing to stop her body from drifting from her mind's control to slink towards the nightmarish sight. She steps with caution as FP approaches, like she's about to walk barefoot over broken glass.
But before she even nears him, before she even takes in the entire sight, FP meets her eyes and falters back.
There's a slip in his balance away from her and it's the telling look of horror on FP's face that finally puts a stop to Betty's feet. She barely notices Archie stop an inch behind her or hears Cheryl gasp along with Sweetpea hiss. She only sees the sick stain of red and shaven flesh on a familiar shoulder - one she ran her fingers on and tickled with her lips - and the way FP's eyes stick to her while his features crumble to silently mouth something out.
Sorry, maybe.
Or Betty, maybe.
Her eyes flicker up and down, from face to face, from tears to blood, from him to Jug.
"J…" She can't finish.
She wonders why the universe hates her so much.
Her breathing is picking up.
The blood covering every inch of Jughead's barely recognizable face is somehow dripping down her throat and clogging her lungs.
She wonders when she started praying for god to strike her down and let her rot in the earth, so she wouldn't have to see and feel a moment of this reality. A reality with him gone.
"-shouldn't be here." She barely hears FP whisper, over the thunder in her ears. A hand presses to her shoulder, as if afraid she's about to stumble back.
"What the hell happened," someone beside her demands, pushing past her breaking form, towards the hell that was the hammer that made her shatter. "What the fuck did they do ?!"
"Oh god- no, not- not Jug too," a lighter voice - Toni - pleads.
A second hand grabs her other shoulder, and she realizes someone's helping her slowly to the ground as her knees give out. The hands don't let go, they tighten around her unfeeling arms and if she were still alive, they'd likely stop her blood flow.
But she's just a corpse now, gaping like a dying fish, eyes unfocused yet fixed to the image of Jughead in his father's arms, head back, face blank, and skin torn and battered. At some point her eyes don't have to look up at Jughead's form and FP's chin and instead just straight across the ground when FP stumbles and falls to one knee.
"Shit!" The hands behind her loosen. "Cheryl!" Archie - she recognizes then - calls out, and new, smaller hands press against her, just as a blur of blue and yellow dashes by to block her view of bloodied black and blue. That wall spurs her into some form of animated life in which she finally moves, crawling from Cheryl's hands that hardly try to stop her, and onto her feet to follow Archie like a ghost.
Archie's hands have drifted under Jughead, where FP's are placed, and with a step or two closer Betty finally feels the distant feeling of faint creep closer.
"Is he…?" Archie begins to ask, taking most of Jughead's weight as FP starts to collapse further to the ground, or further around his son, since he bows down and shakes his head, choking in response.
"I don't know," FP replies, "I don't know, he was breathin' but I- I couldn't- I haven't since..." He's out of breath and trembling like he's moments away from keeling over.
Behind her, a commotion has begun, shouts and revving cycles swell. In the clambering chaos Betty finds a calm in a bit of sudden uncertainty. Her own hands, riddled with tremors, reach for the familiar curves of Jughead's face, that with the slightest touch she can feel are swollen and slick with blood and spit.
But still warm.
She pushes into Archie's side as he practically takes Jughead into his lap. The only reason he doesn't tip over being Sweetpea, who appears besides them to add his hands to help. FP falls backward and sits, head on his knees, like a defeated man on the ground. Betty yanks her eyes away refusing to wallow with him after he'd given them a slight of hope.
She's not praying, but she's hoping, counting on hysteria, that they simply got ahead of themselves.
The voice of Cheryl breaks over their shoulders, fraying with a shriek, as Betty gets to her knees to lean over Jughead's head, "Somebody check, for god sakes! Is he breathing?!"
Voices are still echoing like wild howls in the night, some from the Serpents circling around their group, some from the riots still raging in the town, some perhaps from the angry broken families crowding outside her house for justice and revenge. Yet for the moment she can't hear them.
Only the warm tickle of Jughead's whistling breath hits her ear, the kind she knows from early nights, and middle mornings, and busy afternoons. A noise she knows too well to doubt and think it's the universe playing tricks on her again.
"Betty-" Archie starts.
"He's breathing," she interrupts turning up to face him. She finally sees the terror on his face that's been out of her view since they piled into his dad's truck, but with her words his features morph around a heavy sigh and watery eyes of disbelief as he looks down from her to their friend. She doesn't feel the ugly dead weight in her chest morph or change, but she feels it flicker to something lighter.
"He's breathing!" She says again, a little louder, to no one and also everyone, looking over to Sweetpea who seems seconds from punching her or crying, and then to Toni who's over her shoulder wrapped in Cheryl's arms, clutching the lapel of her leather jacket. "Hospital," Betty says to them, "We need to get him to a hospital."
Toni barely takes a second before her brow is set. She responds with a nod and a, "Let's move it then," before she retreats to shout something at the swarm of Serpents behind them.
Archie and Sweetpea are already moving to their feet. She stands along with them, keeping her hands on Jughead, one gently at the back of his head, keeping it from falling like the strand of a weeping willow over Archie's arm.
"We'll take him in the truck," Archie says pulling slightly from Sweetpea's grip. Sweetpea bumps her shoulder as he shifts after Archie to fight for some of Jughead's weight.
"We'll meet you guys there, then," Sweetpea answers grunting with the weight, "Make sure he doesn't die on the way. One Serpent tonight is one too many." The last part is said like he's swallowed glass before he spoke, but it doesn't slow him down. The two boys are shuffling away as fast as they can manage, away from the grounds still blooming with the fire's light, back to where Archie crudely parked the truck.
And as much as she wants to follow - to hold his weight, or take his hand, and give him comfort - Betty pulls her hands from Jughead and lets herself fall back. While the others move ahead, her spine prickles with awareness for the one person behind her in the dust, and she finds herself spinning to face him before she's really thought it through.
FP, now on his feet, looks every bit of miserable as she feels.
His breathing comes out labored and his focus seems to trail after Jughead's figure almost likes he's looking for a ghost. She feels herself split apart like frayed thread at her ends and pulls her hand away that had been reaching towards his arm to steady him. If she wasn't drowning in the endless rain of punishment and guilt the universe had brought on her tonight she'd find it easier to hate this man who dragged Jughead to this bloodied fate of sacrifice and stupid honor, only to be one who dragged him back.
"Mr. Jones..."
The man looks at Betty with a sorrow that almost makes her think he's read her thoughts and felt her hidden hate, and in her weakness - in the orange glow of fire that'd done nothing but flicker through the night, content to simply light the violence by its flames - his eyes make her think of her father.
"Right," he answers, mostly to the words she hasn't said. "Right, let's-"
The sound of the truck doors slamming shut and a yell from Archie with her name, makes her lean away to run, yet she can't bring herself to go. Her focus narrows in on FP's eyes - red and worn and watching for her, she realizes, to make the call - and she almost flounders in the thought that in the truck there's only room for one of them.
But the night is cruel and unforgiving. It's shown with blatancy how much it wants to take from her and rip her life apart. In this night of horrors, written and directed by the universe just for her, she's come out with a harder shell. Just for this moment, it lets her take the selfish route.
"I have to…" be with him, leave you, be there if he dies. She steps backwards as Archie screams for her again, the endless screaming of an engine starting up her panic once again.
FP doesn't argue though, he doesn't move or nod or falter at her grab to steal his moment with his son, even if they are the last - the mantra in her head tries to say their not - FP just stiffens with a better balance than before and says, "Go on." she tips backwards, "He needs you."
On another night, in another universe, maybe she'd tell FP, he needs you too.
Because even after everything she's still thinking of all the times she scraped her knee, and all the times ran from her mother, or pissed off her sister, or blew the engine of a rundown car and craved nothing but the comfort of her father. Even when he was the one breathing death into her face.
"We'll meet you there," is all she can say, before she runs away, wondering why the universe hates her enough that everything she's ever loved is tainted.
.
.
.
In the time that Betty flees to the roaring group of Serpent bikes, the spinning tires of Fred Andrews' truck whirl away, and Sweetpea comes running back to his side to yell at him that he needs to move his sorry ass and grab his bike, FP finally breaks away from the haunting image in his head.
The bout of freedom lets him stumble to his bike where he nearly knocks his helmet off - someone must have hung it on the handle, he mindlessly thinks. He still feels like he's sinking under murky waters, his ears ringing and chest heaving from his final struggle over and over and over again on Jughead's chest until it actually began to move, and he pulled his boy through the torn and flickering shadows only to stumble onto land to meet those eyes again-
He turns the keys, lets the engine roar, and ducks his head a little closer to let the sound deafen all his lingering thoughts. Sweetpea's bike pulls up beside him and another Serpent, speaker for the others who've been waiting on their bikes behind them, grabs FP's attention.
FP looks up at him but can't quite make it to his eyes, can't see who it is. There's a faint red ahead where the Andrews' truck and Toni's bike are quickly disappearing, and he can't pull his eyes away from it.
"We're coming with you Jones," the Serpent says, "We're not letting another one of our kids die alone again."
FP's chest and back are aching from the strain of pumping life back into his son, but he's also numb enough and filling with thick swell of sudden liquid rage that he whirls from the road ahead to grab the man - Louis, he's mind supplies - by the lapels of his leather jacket and hiss.
"He's not gonna die and he's not your fucking kid, he's mine!" FP explodes, spit flying with his venom, but Louis just looks back with all his expectations met along with a tinge of fear and pity that FP needs to blink away before he's drowning in his memories again.
"Just- just do whatever the hell you want," he ends, all energy slipping from his hands, and hitting the gas to pull away with Sweetpea silent, riding closely at his side.
And in just a minute he's closing in on the sharp scarlet of the Blossom girl who's hanging onto Toni for dear life. Sweetpea swerves around to ride next to Toni and in that moment through the wind FP hears the Serpents on their tail. In the headlights of their bikes he can clearly read the plates of the Andrews pickup truck. Somehow his boy is in there cramped between his Northsider friends, escaping death as fast as they can, and yet here he is, his father, leading the very group that brought Jughead to its doors.
FP grips the handles of his bike, cold and stinging without his gloves, as their group swerves through darkened streets that begin to fill with echoes of the raging riot - abandoned cars, forgotten flare sticks, spinning lights of red and blue - and he tries to pray.
He prays so his thoughts will stop, so the images of disappointed eyes will disappear, so he never has to bury a kid every again - one who buried with his own bare hands and one he never knew was his and maybe would've lived if they weren't - he prays until the group is swerving after the truck as it squeals and breaks on the bottom stairs of the hospital.
Toni parks and Sweetpea spins out but FP pulls to the front to kick his bike leg out and pull the driver side door open. Archie scrambles out and almost falls against FP's chest, his arms under Jughead's and straining to fight the truck's stair-bound incline. Betty comes out next holding Jughead's legs, her face wet and hands stained red.
They both look surprised to see him and oblivious that he was the one to open the door.
"Jesus, Andrews! I told you not to kill him!" Sweetpea yells, running around the back of the truck, while FP moves to Jughead's back just as Archie's arms begin to drop. FP slips an arm underneath Jughead's shoulders and takes a heaving breath to place a hand at Jughead's knees, but not before meeting Betty's eyes again. She shakes under the weight of Jughead's legs but looks reluctant to step away.
Nearby madness rages as Archie shouts at Sweetpea and an argument ensues. The other Serpents arrive with a roar, all parking in a mass behind the truck and FP tries not to fall apart at the seams as well as give some kind of look of promise to Betty as he takes his son back into his arms.
"It's okay," he tries to swear - or maybe lie.
She glances to Jughead's face and winces, but sure enough steps away, though she keeps a lingering hand hovering by his shoulder while FP runs with her around the truck and his bike, up the stairs, and into Toni and Cheryl who have a frazzled looking nurse at their side. Though Toni runs back down the stairs telling Sweetpea to stop the moment they appear - to his surprise Cheryl stays and comes to stand at Betty's side.
The commotion around them is swirling louder and louder as riot victims continue to flood the hospital entrance. The raging fires of violence and war fill the air and people begin to find the energy to strike up issue with the crowd of Serpents at the bottom of the stairs. It's enough that a big guy FP knows must be security comes running through the entrance doors just as the nurse that Toni somehow found starts towards Jughead in his arms.
"This is a hospital!" The man yells, barreling down the stairs, "If you're gonna fight do it on the streets!"
FP doesn't get to see the end of it though, the nurse is pulling at his shoulder to lead him inside.
"My god-" she begins, only to stop herself, and train her face to neutral, "What happened to him-?" Betty answers for him as they stumble past bandaged people and frantic nurses in the hospital's main hallway.
"He was jumped and-"
"And if you want to keep your job and this hospital open, you'd best find Dr. Masters and a room for him," Cheryl interrupts voice vicious and arm around Betty's, in a way that FP knows is a message for him that her help is for Betty and not for him. And while he's looking, he catches how Betty and their nurse jump and shudder at the mention of the doctor's name.
Though the nurse, an older woman by her greying hair and wrinkled face, works past whatever emotions are gripping her by the tension of her jaw and yells for help and gurney. She then turns back to them and meets his eyes with another icy look of disappointment and lets the bomb drop.
"I'm afraid Dr. Masters is dead." FP vaguely hears Cheryl gasp. "This hospital is doing its best right now to work around a crime scene along with the riots in the streets, and we'll do the same for your friend even without unnecessary threats."
FP notices the heightened chaos in the building then - the unhinged atmosphere that wasn't even there when he and Jughead had carried Fangs through the doors, only hours before. Now for every nurse a cop stands nearby questioning and calming and even helping run the gurney down the hallway to them.
The same cop pushing the gurney helps the nurse pull Jughead from his arms and place him on the gurney, just as it starts to wheel away.
FP shoots a hand out, before Jughead's face disappears from view - the blood that had been splattered about the skin before, looking like someone had tried desperately to wipe some of it away - he grabs his shoulder and tries to work his throat because the hospital is understaffed, the nurse is letting him walk with the gurney as they pull it down the hall, and he already got his second chance, so why in hell would the world give him a third.
So he tells his son what he probably always should've.
"I love you, Jug, alright, I love you, and you're gonna pull through, you hear me, you're gonna pull through."
And then they're at the glass doors where FP knows he's going to be left behind so he slows his pace and stops to watch a scene he already saw early that night, with Fangs instead. He hopes it doesn't end the same.
Not really knowing where to go or what to do - his last piece of family gone, the Serpents tearing themselves apart, and the exhaustion of the night blowing over all his panic and dread - he spins around to collapse or at least wandering for a place to sit.
Instead he comes face to face with those eyes again.
His daughter's eyes
The shiny glare and widened shape from disappointment, directed straight at him even when they would hide between bedroom doors, or in her brother's arms. He tried to forget them months ago when his wife pulled his little girl from his life and home, but he must have failed.
"Mr. Jones," she says, and then image flicks away, just as it did at the Ghoulies' grounds, and Betty Cooper appears.
Her arms are wrapped tight around herself, only hospital personnel around her, and he thinks she must have raced after him and also that she might be sick.
"I…" FP finds himself taking a step forward, seeing the white of her face, compared to the bright pink of her jacket, and the quivers that rip through her form. Her hands move to wrap around her stomach. "I think I'm going to be sick."
Her hand shoots over her mouth while her body falls and then he's there hand on her back, kneeling beside her as she crouches, head on her knees, trembling above the floor.
He expects himself to run or simply step away from her when eventually a nurse does come after he finds his voice to call for help, but he never does.
Even when Cheryl catches up to them, and then Archie with Sweetpea and Toni, all looking like they all barely escaped a street brawl or arrest, he finds himself moving to follow Alice Cooper's girl into the next room and standing by her side when she's placed in a waiting room chair with a thick blanket over her shoulders and a bucket at her feet.
No one tells her to go home, though FP's sure she'd win the fight to stay if anyone cared to try.
Besides, she's not the only one who looks miserable.
Archie stands at the end of their little circle - after finding chairs for Toni and Cheryl who sit opposite of Betty - looking like he's seconds from breaking into tears, while he checks his phone every other minute - probably for Hiram Lodge's daughter, FP figures. Sweetpea leans on Toni's chair looking like all his usual anger fizzled out and FP knows if there was a mirror he'd probably look the worse of the bunch.
Maybe that's probably why passersby have been giving long and curious looks their way for quite some time. He almost thinks they're lingering on Betty, but she's sitting with an older shitty looking Serpent, a group of teens, half of who have their own leather jacket, along with the mayoral elect's son, and Clifford Blossom's daughter - it's a spectacle. And an explanation for the hidden conversations that are being spoken in whispers by the other hospital goers after they glance over their shoulders towards Betty.
Either way for him and probably Betty, who can't decide if she wants to hold her vomit bucket or kick it away with her feet, it's just an instant headache as the clock ticks by and no one comes to give them news.
A headache that lasts an hour in the waiting room.
It's the kind of purgatory that lasts long enough that eventually a handful of Serpents appear and make their way to him.
"Any news?" One of them asks, taking a long look at their group and stopping to stare strangely at Betty. Archie moves to stand in front of her, just as FP does, shaking his head and then listens in a catatonic state as they explain their kamikaze plan to hit the Ghoulies where it hurts. Their frustration and passion backed by Jughead and his sensible plan for sacrifice.
"The others can't sit back anymore, not after Fangs and not after Jughead threw himself onto the Ghoulies' terf for the rest of us," Louis says, "Everyone's meetin' at the Wyrm before we make our move, I get it if you guys wanna stay here but the more men we have the more chance we've got out there."
Sweetpea drinks the plan for revenge up like an open fountain and follows the boys out, and soon after Toni and Cheryl are hot on his heels, when Cheryl complains - a little too sincerely - that she can't stay a minute more in this 'wretched' hospital. FP watches them leave.
He doesn't follow.
He stays rooted at Betty's side, Archie now sitting in the chair opposing him, waiting for the news that'll dictate if he has reason anymore to move, or breath, or live.
And within minutes he gets it.
Some no name doctor makes a beeline straight to him, wearing his heart on sleeve, and the good news on his face.
He follows Betty and Archie to Jughead's room door and lets them go inside before steps in after them, and barely takes one look at his son - obscured by machinery, bandages, and wires - before he's exploding with the carnal need to rip the people responsible for this to shreds.
That's when FP knows it's time for him to leave.
Betty takes a seat at Jughead's side, but Archie runs after him as he turns on his heel and heads for the hospital doors.
"He needs you here, Mr. Jones!" Archie calls after him, but it's too late for convincing, and FP's never been surer than right now that that of all things isn't true.
He takes the bike to the Wyrm and takes every bit of rage and terror filling up his lungs to yell command at the full house he finds filling every corner of the bar. Serpents from before his time and members out of the game for years are back and ready to burn the men responsible for spilling the blood of their own.
The Serpents take to the street for their people, but FP goes out just for one.
The night had still been young when he'd found Jughead, crumbled in a pile lying in the woods, so he rides out with Serpents thinking they have all night to bring fire and brimstone upon the monsters who nearly killed his son.
Of course, the universe proves him wrong.
It's hell that descends upon them.
Old friends are taken, old stomping grounds burned, and the only satisfaction he can get is when he lands one solid hit across the Ghoulie leader, Malachai's, face. By the end of the night he has to fight through rumbled remains to find his own trailer that's somehow still standing untouched in the smoking grounds of Sunnyside.
He goes in for Jughead's beanie, and nothing else.
.
The early morning is creeping in by the time FP stumbles back through the hospital doors, his face swollen and lip leaking blood inside his mouth. He can't decide if he feels worse or better than when he was last here. He lumbers his way against the wall, working with a limp to Jughead's hospital door, that's ajar so he pushes it with his palm to open, and walks inside to find Betty sitting just as he left her, at Jughead's side.
She looks up at him and this time he's ready for the eyes she brings. He just keeps moving until he's at her chair to place the beanie into her lap before he goes back to plop himself into the chair adjacent to her, that's against the wall.
He lets out a heavy sigh once he's off his feet and then a sharp, smaller one when he peers past her to the bed. Jughead rests with tubes and stitches stuck in every patch of his black and blue skin.
"Are the Serpents…?" Betty begins, forcing his attention back to her where she seems to regard the battle written all over his face.
He just shakes his head - he shakes it and feels the beginning concoctions of a lie he'll tell. A lie of no remorse as his mind spins around Jughead in this bed and the disgusting memory of his jacket in his fingers as he placed it over Betty's shoulders - she seems to take it as an answer.
He nods towards Jughead, "Anything, yet?"
She shakes her head.
He feels himself deflate in his chair and Betty turns back to her bedside vigil, taking Jughead's bandaged hand from the top sheet of the hospital bed. FP looks around the room. He notes Betty's pink jacket hanging off her chair, but no other sign of other visitors, specifically Archie or Alice, who he figured would've come clambering to Betty's side by now.
"I'm guessing Archie left," he states, and waits a moment when she doesn't answer before he asks, "Did your mom stop by? I figure she's worried about you."
Betty stiffens but answers, "No..." And then pauses, and FP wonders if she's going to continue, until she cranes her head a bit to direct her voice to him. "She's at the sheriff's station, with Mr. Andrews and Archie…"
FP stretches up slowly and presses her, "What's she doing there with them?" He gets the feeling it isn't for Register work, but for something worse.
Betty doesn't answer just gives attention back to Jughead's fingers in her hand.
"Did something happen?" He questions, stopping when he bites his split lip. He tries to start again. "Is your mom alright?"
"She's fine."
"Well... maybe you should head home, I'll call you if-"
"That's the last place I want to be," she snaps, and he hears her voice ripple like she's about to cry.
The room resounds with the beeping of Jughead's machines and her breathing for a second until it hitches and then she is crying.
"I just," she whimpers, "I keep thinking that if I hadn't tried to-" She sniffles. "Because Dr. Masters would be alive and maybe Jug would be..."
FP shifts from Betty to Jughead - who's his face is slack, and breathing offered by a tube - and he wonders for a moment if those eyes would be open if a better doctor were still here.
"There's no use thinking that," he decides. "Jug's a fighter, we gotta give him time."
Betty's staring at him then, tears slipping down her cheeks and FP thinks then that he's missed her clues and he answered wrong. Her eyes widen like she's shock of what he doesn't know.
He thinks of the way everyone in the hospital had watched her, hours before, like they were privy to something he wasn't.
"Did something happen?" He asks again.
She opens her mouth then and he almost wishes she never did.
Her answer haunts him the full day it takes her to finally leave. It haunts him when hears the truth about Fangs and wanders his way into the hidden hospital room to see the boy wired up worse than Jughead. It haunts him when Archie and Fred visit, get well cards and pity faces in tow, when Sweet pea and Toni visit on the third day after riot night, hours before Jughead moans his name and comes back to life.
Even as the days tick on and Jughead heals it even haunts him while Hiram sneers at Pop's despairing side and lets him go - remarking how remarkable it is that Jughead made it back alive this time.
(FP leaves the diner and his job without a fight).
Betty's answer festers at his side during his nightmares of Jughead's corpse back in his arms and pusses open with a disgusting thought that sends him spiraling enough that he grabs the trailer phone and pleads to Gladys to let him bring their son away before he loses him again.
When she agrees he grabs some beers to drink the entire week away. To drink his thoughts away.
He lies back on the couch, with two bottles down and finds it's not enough, he hears Betty's voice bouncing through his head.
"My dad killed Dr. Masters. He was the Blackhood."
He pops another bottle and lets it spill down his jaw and burn his throat.
Because he thinks of Hal and what he's done and Betty's eyes spilling over tears and then looks at his face in the mirror and sees Jellybean's red eyes filling to brim and he can't for the life of him tell the difference between them anymore.
.
.
.
Betty lets her rage and terror bubble out and argue fruitlessly against Jughead and his comfort, warmth and love, and thinks - for the first time since she smashed the iron shovel of her fireplace against her father's head - that she can overcome this hell.
So she decides to do it.
She marches to the jail and looks her nightmare in his face and tells him he'll never have control of her again.
He threatens her and screams at her when she finally walks away. "I will always be with you, Betty!" bouncing off his glass prison wall.
She leaves his cell and him behind.
It's the last time she thinks of him as "Dad."
Hal Cooper is the Blackhood, a murderer and torturer, but her tormentor no longer. While he may the person the universe decided would be her father, the only thing he has on her is blood that happens to match her own.
Because she takes her name, she takes her memories, she takes her features, she takes her blood - none of them are his, and never again will they be theirs. She refuses to heed his empty warnings. She refuses to hear another one of his lies.
From now on, she tells herself, Betty Cooper has no father.
Because, she tells herself, she never did.
She tells herself she's fine with this.
She tells herself she's okay.
And for a little while she is.
Her mother hugs her when she comes home, and she feels like her house is finally safe. Polly is as weird as she is naive but she's Betty's sister and she's home. Polly fills the empty spaces and dark reminders of the house with her babies and their bubbling laughter.
And Jughead…
Jughead's side is warm and solid in the booth besides her when he joins her at Pop's that night. While Archie smirks and Veronica talks of hopes for their town, for both Nothersiders and Southersides alike, Betty keeps her hands on him. She folds her palms over his shoulder and leans her head close to his. She lets his voice vibrate all around her as she soaks in the smiles of her two friends.
When they all finish their milkshakes and say goodnight - promising to see each other the next morning at the assembly for Archie's student council inauguration - she lets him take her on his bike to some elaborate surprise he says he has planned.
For a little while - for the entire night - she actually feels alright.
From the time he makes her close her eyes and pulls her by the hand so they're stepping into the extravagant couple's room he's somehow booked for the entire night to the time she's lying naked and beyond satisfied - beyond loved - at his side, she's more than fine.
She laughs and crushes him with her weight - almost forgetting to be careful of his healing arm - when he asks her to join the Serpents and to give him a reply by lunch where they'll sit in their high school cafeteria, throwing each other knowing looks about the night before.
He kisses her and caresses her until she thinks yes, yes, I'll follow you anywhere, and then she's moaning it into his shoulder and on his lips, because she doesn't care where he goes or what he does. As long as he's by her side, gripping her hand, being the voice of reason in her stormy spiral, she'll find a way to somehow to survive the universe's next round.
And for a little while that's true.
He's by her side all evening and into the next morning when they're walking hand in hand into the bleachers to sit around their friends. He's bumping shoulders with her even when they release each other's hand to place them over their chests for Josie's cover of the national anthem.
He's there looking back at her with blatant shock and stirring anger when Archie is handcuffed and carted away by Sheriff Minetta.
Sure enough he's there when everything goes to shit and after.
"This is bullshit!" Jughead argues into thin air, starting the same rant he'd been giving to anyone and everyone for the past few days, since Sheriff Minetta had closed the station doors in their faces any time they tried to make any investigative headway.
Only Archie's dad had made it successfully inside the station, but his face had been painted with the lines of someone who lost the fight against the new Sheriff when he made his way out. It seemed that until Ms. Andrews made it into town, there'd be no good news for Archie.
"There's no witness, there's no evidence, there's no legal way they can keep him there!" Jughead fights, stalking back and forth over the throw rug in his trailer's living room.
Betty hangs her jacket on the coat hook by the front door and follows him inside. She doesn't have anything to say to calm him down, their childhood friend who could never hurt a fly, is locked behind bars because of some convoluted scheme that's beyond their means of fighting for the moment. And, even if she did have something to say to him, she pauses when realizes they're not alone.
From the trailer's bedroom hallway FP appears, looking slightly less haggard than he had the last time she'd seen him - when he'd let her take his place at Jughead's bedside. He's dressed in only jeans and a flannel, and she realizes with a start how strange it is to see him without his signature leather jacket.
Now that he's retired as the Serpent king, she figures he's just her boyfriend's dad. Somehow that's all the stranger for her.
"Guessing it didn't go well, huh?" FP guesses, walking into the kitchen and giving her a small smile. "Betty."
She offers him her best smile back, "Mr. Jones." Though it's hard to look him the face and not think about how she pathetically broke down in front of him at the hospital more than a week ago or wonder what he thinks of her now.
She does quite a bit of wondering what other people think of her and her family now.
"Yeah," Jughead calls back and Betty moves to stand beside him in the living room. "It went miserably, again. Sheriff Keller even went with Fred this time and they couldn't get Minetta to even budge. Archie's stuck in there- This is so obviously Hiram's doing and he's got everybody wrapped around his finger!"
"How's your friend taking all that?" FP asks, over the sound of the closing fridge as he follows them into the room with a glass of orange juice. Betty meets his eyes with a furrowed brow and he clarifies as he settles down into the red recliner chair. "Veronica, I mean. She's Archie's girl and Hiram's kid. How's she dealing with all this?"
Betty thinks of Veronica's running mascara days ago when the two of them huddled in the girl's locker room, before school let out and they could follow Archie to the station, where she cursed her father again and again. Her black polished nails grasping the heart shaped locket around her neck.
"As well as she could be," is what Betty settles on.
A light ringtone sings and interrupts the half-felt conversation. Jughead pulls his phone from his leather pocket, and answers.
"Yeah, Sweetpea? What is it?" Jughead asks, his focus turned to her though, and Betty watches his face for clues of their talk. Behind her, Betty hears FP shift in his chair. "Wait, what?!" Jughead demands then, tone and face shifting to tell her enough.
"What is it?" Betty tries and Jughead shakes his head, pulling the phone away.
"The younger serpents are planning to join some kind of protest outside the station on Archie's behalf," he tells her. "Apparently Reggie and the other bulldogs started it and now the other Serpents are joining in."
"Of course," Betty says under her breath, moving to grab her jacket from the couch, as Jughead yells back into the phone, "Wait, wait no you and Fangs don't do anything, until I get there. I'm headed from Sunnyside just keep any of the Serpents from joining in. Yeah... yeah, okay, I got it."
Jughead ends the call and shuts his phone but before Betty slips on her jacket, Jughead puts a hand on her wrist and says something that has her spinning.
"What?" She asks.
"I think you should stay here," he repeats this time for her to hear and her chest is suddenly hot and heavy like she's months back in a parking lot being left out of his life again. The only difference is that it's his hand on her cheek and his face that's open and pleading as he tries to explain before anything comes tumbling from her mouth. "Sweetpea said it's bad, not violent, just the kind of stuff they're saying, mostly the adults that're joining in and-"
"And what?" She pushes, afraid of what he's not trying to say. That he's not ready for her at his side, or that the Southside still won't accept her yet, even when she's seen and lived through enough shit to count as one of them.
"It's about the signs," he tries again, he grabs her lower arm, "Sweetpea said there's people that're- they're saying shit about your dad. They're using it as a chance to protest about the blackhood."
Betty immediately deflates, "Oh."
"I hate to say it, but having a gang rally behind Archie, might not be the best thing right now. I gotta go call the Serpents off," he explains and reaches into his pocket and grabs his bike keys. "It's not everybody, so it shouldn't be that bad, and it's not like I'm gonna have to wrangle Reggie so- anyway I'll be right back." He meets her dead in the eyes. "I swear I'm not leaving you out of my life anymore. I asked you to be my queen and I meant it," he says with a shy duck of his head.
Any paranoia she had is replaced with a heavy weight of exhaustion that rears its head whenever someone lingers outside her house with their phone too long or when she sees the empty family picture frames her mother has recently torn out.
"What do the signs say?" She pries, not completely sure if she wants to know.
Jughead pauses for a second, and FP is slipping back into the corner of her vision and she realizes he must have left the room, because he's awkwardly trying not to listen in the kitchen. "Stuff like, 'Cooper death row, Andrews let go'," Jughead cringes as he says it. "Apparently Cheryl was the one who told Sweetpea, you shouldn't go."
Betty finds herself sitting down on the couch then, with Jughead's hand on her knee.
"If you want to go I won't say no," he offers.
FP chimes in then, pulling both her and Jughead's attention away. "May be better just to let Jughead handle this one," FP says to her.
Betty's head is pounding at the image of the protest outside the jail that she decides going to it and making the image real isn't worth it.
"You're right I don't really feel like dealing with all of that, right now," she reassures, though Jughead gives her a question glance. Another chance for her to change her mind. "It's fine, Jug, just let me know if something happens."
"And keep yourself outta trouble, boy," FP adds.
Jughead lets his hand drift from her leg and stands, saying, "Alright, if you're okay with it, then I'm gonna go, but I'll be right back."
He's out the door then, the sound of his bike coming to life and pulling away soon after, leaving her to sigh and lean back against the dip of the familiar couch cushions while FP looms nearby.
"So," he starts and pours another glass of orange juice, "Joining the Serpents?"
Usually she tries to straighten up a bit before answering a loaded question but instead she curls into the corner of the couch, and simply says, "Yeah, officially this time, I guess."
FP only hums in response around the rim of his glass, before moving back to his chair, though he looks to her before he sits.
"You mind?"
She leans against her hand and lets her eyelids droop, "No, it's fine."
She sits smushed like that against the far end of the couch for the next thirty minutes. Head in her hand as she rests her elbow against the armrest, the only thing stopping her from drifting off to sleep in the corner of the room jostling his leg up and down, asking her insistent questions every once in a while.
The leg pauses as FP's hand wipes over his jeans. She prepares for his five-minute question.
"You sure you don't want some water, or something-"
"No, I'm good."
The bouncing starts again in the red recliner chair. She can sense he wants to ask something else, or that there's something he's afraid to say.
She straightens up from where's she slouched and crosses a leg a top another, getting the chance to pull her phone from her back pocket and check the screen. Still no text from Jug.
"Jughead say something to ya?"
"No," she says, leaking a tone of slight frustration, mostly at his probing, and not, she tells herself, at Jughead's delay or silence.
"Well, guess that's a good thing," FP decides, "Probably means he's on his bike, headed back, already."
Betty feels her forehead crease and her knuckles clench, she peers off towards the door, wishing she could escape. She's not in the mood for conversation anymore, especially when it's covering the thick tension that's entered the room. It's the kind of atmosphere that appears any time the topic of her father comes up. It's irritating enough that she finds her own leg has begun to jump.
FP clears his throat and Betty huffs through her nose.
"You know I should probably get outta here," FP says, startling her to look away from where she's staring daggers at the trailer door, throwing commandments for Jughead to suddenly burst through it and ease her pulsing headache. She watches a little dumbfounded as FP stands and stretches over the chair, like he's decided to break the repetition of the last few minutes. "Tell Jug I'll see him, later, I'm gonna head out," he adds, bending down to grab his keys from the water stained coffee table.
Betty doesn't jump up to stop him, but she does feel a plop of searing shame hit the bottom of her gut that her feelings were so obviously written on her face. "Mr. Jones, I-"
He interrupts shaking his head and moving from the living room center to grab his jacket from the closest by the kitchen wall. "Nah, it's alright, I can see I'm getting on your nerves a bit, so I'm just gonna-" He shrugs towards the door, and then she surprises herself by standing up, hands by her sides, at the corner of coffee table, feeling like she's being seen for the ugliness that's been billowing inside her and desperately wishing Jughead would take this moment to appear.
"I'm sorry," she starts, "I didn't mean- I just felt like-"
He interrupts her again, and she feels the situation slipping from her grasp, "It's fine, Betty, look I get it," he moves across threshold into the kitchen to grab his helmet and sunglasses that are sitting atop newspapers on the table. She stays rooted to her spot.
"Jug will probably be back soon," she starts to argue weakly, "I didnt- You should stay until he gets back-"
"Don't worry about it, Betty." FP holds his helmet at his hip and grabs the door to pull it open. "If Jughead asks tell him I'll be checking in on Fred," he finishes, moving to leave the trailer.
Though that's the exact moment her phone rings from her pocket and draws both of their attention from his exit.
"Oh," Betty says pulling her phone out, she looks up with a bit of stubborn glee, "That's probably, Jug." Which as she thought, has FP stepping backward into the trailer. Though as she pulls the phone quickly past her vision and to her ear she realizes the numbers on the phone don't even have a contact, and she vaguely registers the last few digits as the number for the jail.
"Hello?" She answers, looking to FP who's dropping his helmet on the kitchen counter in the wall. "Who is this?" FP's face changes with confusion and she shakes her head.
"Yes, this is the Riverdale County Jail, am I speaking with Alice Cooper?"
In the tunnel that's become her vision, Betty thinks she sees FP spell out Jughead's name with a slanted brow. Her nauseating three second old fears over Archie or even Jughead calling from the station are replaced with something that bubbles acid into her throat, at the mention of her mother's name.
"No, this is her daughter, Elizabeth Cooper," Betty corrects, eyes flickering away to the wood wall of the trailer but finds it devoid of any comfort. She looks back to FP who's crept a little closer. "Can I ask why you're calling? Is this about Archie Andrews?" She prays it's not, but also hopes it is, afraid of the alternative. She blinks and thinks that maybe this is some ridiculous call regarding Register work, and some secretary called the wrong Cooper cell number.
But then her hearing tunes back in and she feels the floor beneath her open like the gaping mouth of hell.
"No, it's not. Ms. Elizabeth are you alone right now, and are you sitting down?"
Betty feels a hand on her shoulder keeping her above the abyss below her feet as it begins to suck her down.
"No, I'm- I'm with someone." FP's hand tightens, but she doesn't, she can't whirl her mind or muscles to sit down. "Why?" She asks, though she knows the answer.
"Well, dear… it's because this call is pertaining to your father, Hal Cooper..."
Somehow, with the final crackle over the grainy speaker, all Betty thinks is how she somehow always knew the nightmare wouldn't ever really end.
"I'm afraid he was found unresponsive in his cell."
Fic title: The Chain by Fleetwood Mac
Chapter title: Father and Son by Cat Stevens