"Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time."
W.H. Auden, The More Loving One
Betty is walking home in the rain. She is using her blue umbrella to shield off the worst of the drops, but it only helps so much. It is the first week of June and barring an apocalypse, a week from now she will have graduated, though it is a hard week to get through, full of studying and details.
She starts to walk faster so that she can get home and back to work sooner. Her English paper won't write itself. She is three blocks from home when she hears someone shout behind her, she turns towards the noise. Something heavy and black hits the top of her head. She feels her body falling, but she is unconscious before she hits the sidewalk.
Betty smells mold, she feels damp. She hears strange voices around her. At least two people are having a heated conversation, but she can't follow it. The sound of their voices are muffled and she can't make out the words at first, but then she hears the phrase serpent queen.
She tries to stand up even though she can't see yet, and she finds that she can't. She is tied to something. Probably a chair. Then she hears a deep male voice say "She's awake."
That is when she finds out that she can open her eyes. The room has one bare light bulb in the center. The walls are gray and the floor is unfinished. Clearly, she is in a basement. There is a drain directly below her. She knows she is in deep shit now but she doesn't open her mouth to scream, a year ago she might of, two years ago she would of for sure, but she has learned to panic in silence, to panic in a way where no one around you can tell.
There are three men facing her. They all look tall, but she is tied to a chair so her perspective is skewed. They are all wearing leather jackets, not the familiar serpent jackets, or even the metal studded jackets of the now destroyed dismantled Ghoulies. These jackets have a wolf on them, snarling. She can only see the patch on one, the man facing away from her, the other two are staring at her. All three are in their mid-twenties, a little older than her. All of them are strangers.
She knew this gang, The Pack, they had started to come into town now that the Ghoulies were gone. They were still new, had only been here for a couple of months, but they had already caused problems. A couple of days ago Jughead's apartment had been broken into and completely trashed. Even the garbage had been searched. It was now clear to Betty that The Pack had done that.
All three men are staring at her, but they aren't saying anything. Betty is staying silent too. It is the only advantage she has, that and not panicking.
Her mom would still be at work. Jughead wasn't coming by till 6 so it would still be a couple of hours at this point till anyone even suspected she was missing.
The tallest of the three, a man with long brown hair, approaches her, and presses his palms against her knees. She forces herself not to react. She is still wearing her jeans, but she could feel the heat of his hands through the denim. "It took you a long time to wake up."
That sentence gave Betty some hope, Jughead could be looking for her right now.
"I didn't see any reason to rush."
"Where does Jughead keep the drugs?" There was no beating around in the bushes with these guys.
"I don't know." Betty replies, trying to maintain a neutral facial expression. The man hits her so hard in the chest, that the chair she was on goes flying backwards, hits the floor, and she blacks out again.
When Betty comes to the room is empty, the light still on. They had stood her chair upright again. At this rate, it seems inevitable that she would end up with a head injury. That was the worst consequence she would let herself think about.
She had no idea how much time has passed. Betty couldn't give them what they wanted. She remembers last year, when she was still a junior, the first time she had been asked for drugs. She was at a party in Greendale, watching Veronica flirt with a guy from university when a boy around her age had approached her and asked to buy drugs. She wasn't wearing a Serpent's jacket, her tattoo wasn't showing (it was in a place where it rarely showed), she had no idea how he spotted her. She looked in the mirror after the party and saw an innocent looking pastel clad teenager staring back.
Still she said what she would say countless times after, to many different people - "Here is a number you can call." Now she has printed business cards with just the number on it, but back then she scrawled it down on a white piece of paper for him. She didn't say that it was her boyfriend's number, but everyone knew, that is why they were asking her in the first place.
When it first happened in Greendale she was shocked to be asked, even though she already knew all about the drugs. She just hadn't thought about other people knowing about her connection to then.
Betty and Jughead had debated for a long time (and very loudly) about dealing. But after the trailer park was lost and the need to re-home serpents grew, it seemed like the only real solution. It was just supposed to be temporary, but of course, it wasn't. The six apartments (and heat, electricity, food, and transportation) they were paying for were not going to start paying for themselves. Now they were going on two years of this - keeping 25 serpents afloat while three, Jughead, Joaquin, and Sweet pea dealt just enough to keep everyone going.
Betty was thinking about this when the tall man re-entered. He was no longer wearing his jacket. He was wearing a white tank, not unlike the ones Jughead wore.
"Where are the drugs?" The man asked again. This time he had a knife. It didn't seem like he was going to risk knocking her out again anytime soon.
"I don't know." Betty said. He pressed the knife against the back of upper arm and pushed it into her. She screamed then, stopping as soon as he removed the knife. She couldn't see the blood, but she could feel it. running down to her elbow.
"Where does your boyfriend live?"
"You already know." She says. "You searched his apartment two days ago." She tries to focus on Jughead's apartment. Not the trashed version, but the way it was most of the time, clean and basic. It was a studio, on the Southside in an old but well-maintained building. It was more her home than her mother's house was. She tried to focus on the bookshelf, the pile of pillows they had turned into a reading nook.
Still it was hard to focus on anything but the knife dragging along the surface of her skin, threatening to pierce it again. There was already so much pain.
Betty had been beaten before, a year ago now, in one the last hurrahs by the Ghoulies but it was much more haphazard, and the fact that it had happened in the rear of the school had reassured her. They hadn't kidnapped her, there were no knives. Still she had ended up in bed for a week because of it. She remembers that sour expression on Alice's face. How Alice leaned over when she thought Betty was asleep and whispered "This is what you get for loving him. You earned this." Betty keeps her eyes closed.
"I can kill you." the man said.
Betty steels herself. There was no point in begging. There was no way to change this man's mind if he had decided to kill her. "You probably should."
The man chuckled, "Why?"
"The last time Jughead found me injured by a rival gang, he killed a man." That wasn't entirely true, but it was closer to the truth than either of them admitted most of the time. They had nightmares about it still. "That gang is long gone now."
"We heard about it." He said. She knew that if he knew what her role was in that expulsion, he would kill her right now, so he clearly didn't. By now Jughead would be searching for her, she knew it.
"I am only going to ask one more time. Where does he keep the drugs?" This time he pushed his knife into her leg, right around the ankle.
"I don't know." And she was glad she didn't. She never let Jughead tell her because she always suspected she would be the weak link. Jughead rarely traveled alone anymore. Sweat Pea or Joaquin were with him half the time, Toni occasionally. Betty was the more vulnerable one. Jughead had tried to change that. For a while after the last attack he'd forced Toni on her, and while the two of them got on well now, Betty valued her alone time too much to put up with it for long. Now she was regretting that.
The pain took over again. She tried to force the stray thoughts out of her head. She tried to focus on anything. His outfit, the light, and finally she found that the only way through was to focus on the pain. The way it felt to have a knife in her arm. When he removed the knife, nothing felt better. She was light headed. She realized if the man didn't patch her up soon she was going to bleed out.
She woke up and the overhead light was off, the basement was pitch black, and her whole body was throbbing. She could tell right away that they had in fact patched her up. She wondered why. After all she had made it perfectly clear she didn't know the whereabouts of the drugs. She didn't think she would be of much use to them now. More of a liability really. Though she hoped they didn't think of that. She desperately wanted to live.
She could hear people walking on the floor above her, she could hear them talking, but not well enough to make out any of the words. Most houses in Riverdale had unfinished basements, so she really hadn't a clue where she was. She couldn't even tell if she was on the Northside or the Southside.
Betty tried to move her body a bit in the chair, but pain spiked through her. Damn it. She tried to focus on good things. Jughead late at night when he was so tired and she was so tired, they could barely manage to stay awake, but still they had so much to talk about in the dark. The four of them at Pop's before Archie and Veronica had broken up and moved away. Last summer when she and Jughead took that road trip to Boston and neither of them had to do anything for the Serpents that week (honestly running a gang, was a lot like having children, in her opinion – relentless responsibility).
The way Polly was now, happily ensconced in a new relationship. The way Jughead knew her better than she knew herself sometimes. The way milkshakes tasted after a long run. The way she felt when it was just the two of them in his apartment and they both slipped their rings on. All of these thoughts could not overwhelm the pain or the fear she felt, building in her stomach, like acid. Any moment someone could come in and start torturing her all over again.
She was helpless. She might die here, but she couldn't let her mind dwell on that. Jughead would find her, the Serpents were resourceful when they needed to be. Three months ago when it looked like Jug was going to jail, and the sheriff was summoning her every two days for questioning, everything had seemed hopeless, yet they had gotten out of that well before the court date.
The door opened and the room flooded with light for a moment, and then the bare bulb above her flicked on. It was a different man this time. He had no knife. He was shorter. He was wearing his leather jacket. His hair was so blond it was almost white.
"We are ransoming you. Your boyfriend has till 7 PM tomorrow to drop off the drugs."
Betty knew it wouldn't end there. The drugs weren't enough. They would want the name of the middleman. They would want the Serpents out of the market, and she was fine with that right now. She didn't say anything though. She had learned to be scary, even while chained. Silence can be terrifying.
"Aren't you going to say anything?" The man asked again.
Betty was grateful for the power the silence gave her, she focused on that instead of the pain.
"He agreed to the deal." Betty didn't say anything. She knew there was no question for Jughead, her life was the priority. He didn't care about the drugs. It wasn't like he ever used them. It would be back to the drawing board for them, in terms of how to support the Serpents, but they would figure out. They were two years older, two years wiser.
"We don't plan to return you in one piece though." The man says. Betty feels the air swoop out of her. She remains silent, her feet twitching anxiously. The man leaves the room, the light still on.
She hates living in fear. She remembers when she first became "queen", when she and Jughead first realized the extant of work they faced in terms of supporting the gang, how every day felt tinged with fear, fear of failure mostly, but there was unrest in the gang too, so there was fear of a revolt at well. At some point her whole life adjusted, so that she became accustomed to that level of fear, it became the new normal. Not that revolt was an issue now. The gangs financial stability over the last year had ensured that.
Earlier this year she remembers the fear she felt after Jughead was arrested, the daily worry that he would be in jail. Even that she got used to after a point, but jail isn't death. She is so much stronger than she used to be but she isn't sure she is strong enough for this. She can't imagine becoming accustomed to the amount of fear she feels now. Her mind couldn't sustain it.
Archie moved to Chicago last year because he couldn't handle the stress of being in Riverdale anymore. Now they still talked to him over videochat most weekends, but it was different. He seemed so much younger than they were. His responsibilities only extending as far as school, the occasional weekend job. That had been true for them for a long time though. Maybe the distance just made it more apparent.
Veronica had left too, for a boarding school that vastly improved her chances of getting into an ivy league school (her grades had never been the best). She had been fearful by then, often giving excuses to Betty to get out of spending time together.
If you had told a younger Betty Cooper that Veronica Lodge would end up afraid of her, she would have laughed at the absurdity. Clearly though the path she was taking in this world was not the one she expected as a freshman or sophomore.
Sometimes at night when she and Jughead were snuggle chatting in bed she would blame her father for her change. Finding out that he was a serial killer was life altering, even minus the months of mental torture he put her through, and the fact that she had to be the one to bring him down. Hal was the catalyst, more than Jughead joining the Serpents, more than any other single factor it came down to him, that much was true.
Besides what her father did changed her mother irrevocably. The Alice who raised her was sharp and manipulative, controlling beyond reason. Alice post divorce relinquished most of her power. She and Betty had a much better relationship now that Betty only lived with her on every other week. In a way, it was like after a normal custody agreement, except instead of spending one week with her father (in prison and never visited) and one week with her mother, she spent one with Jughead and one with Alice.
But the serpents couldn't be factored out of her change entirely. The sight of Jughead's body, a bloody mess in his father's arms could not be factored out at all. FP leaving town, leaving his responsibilities to Jughead completely, also played a role. She was a sum of her past. This too would change her if she survived, she realized. Not just the beatings, but the waiting, the time spent tied to a chair with no control over her fate. The time where she was trying to focus on anything but the room around her.
She tries to move her arms again, but no luck, they were tightly bound together. Her legs too. She wasn't getting out of here on her own strength, unless something changed. Her two hopes were prisoner exchange or Jughead finding her first.
Betty worried for hours. The same thoughts circling over and over in her head. No matter how hard she tried to focus on the positive, the reality of the situation, the reality of pain, was ever present. She was also thirsty, desperately so. She didn't know how long it had been since she had a drink of water, but it could have been days.
Eventually she dozed awkwardly, her neck unsupported, her body stiff. She woke up and could see the blond man staring at her. He was standing still, and it looked like he might have been watching her in her sleep for a while. The thought gave her chills.
"12 more hours to go." The man said. Betty didn't want to speak to him, but she was so thirsty.
"Could I have water?"
"So you can talk." The man said, leaving the room for a minute and returning with a glass. He placed it near Betty's lips and she managed to take a few awkward sips.
"Thank you." She regretted saying those words, but Alice Cooper had trained her too well.
The man took a step back as if apprising her. "You are not what I expected."
"What did you expect?"
"Piercing's, dyed hair, ripped jeans." In a different context, Betty would have laughed at the way he so perfectly described Toni. "I wasn't expecting the valedictorian. And once I was told who you were, once I saw your pictures, I didn't expect you to see such a bitch."
Betty doesn't think she deserved that. For one thing she just said thank you (non sarcastically) to someone who tortured her. But she is silent. She should have stayed with that strategy the whole time. It is the safest.
The man moves closer to her, and Betty wonders if he called her a bitch to psych himself up for what he was going to do to her next.
He takes a swing at her face and her nose cracks, he gets behind the chair and slams it forward and her knee cap feels like it explodes outwards. She screams again.
The man takes a step back and he looks at her with an almost pleased expression on his face. Although maybe it's just the angle. She has to strain her neck to see him at all, now that her face is pressed against the floor.
"Why did you do that?" Betty asks. Even though she knows she would have a little of the upper hand if she remained silent she can't help asking this.
"Because I want you to go back to him broken and ugly. I want Jughead to know we destroyed you. He will never look at you the same way again. Even if he stays with you."
As awful as the situation is, as much pain as she is in, she can't help but laugh. She is not someone without doubts, but Jughead's love is not one of them. The idea that it is tied to her looking the same way is absurd. She's been destroyed, he's been destroyed, but they have not been destroyed in a long time.
She hears the man murmur "crazy bitch" as he walks out, the door closing behind him. She falls asleep with her face against the cement floor.
She wakes to cool night air, the smell of wet grass. She looks up into Jughead's face. He is carrying her body in his arms. They are outside and it is light out. Her hands are free now and her feet. Everything aches. Her eyes meet his and she sees that he's crying.
"I'm Ok, Jug." She says, only then does he realize she is conscious.
"I love you, Betts." He says, walking faster. "We are taking you to the hospital, now."
"No. They'll ask questions. I will be fine." She says. They haven't done hospitals in years. She had removed a bullet once, using a youtube tutorial. It wasn't something she would recommend doing, but it had worked.
"It's worse than you think." Jughead said shaking his head. She thought it couldn't possibly be, there was so much pain, but a hospital wasn't going to fix that faster, necessarily.
She wondered now suddenly, what had happened to the tall man, the blond haired one. She looks at Jughead questioningly.
"I am not sure you want to know." He said answering her unspoken question. Someone else opened the door, Joaquin maybe, and Jughead slid her into the back seat. Her whole body felt the movement, and hated it.
Toni was in the driver's seat and when she turns around a sickened look covers her face, "Shit." Toni opens her door and throws up on the curb.
"That bad?" Betty said, trying to keep her tone of voice light.
Sweat Pea slipped into the front seat and said "Let's just say I'm glad we killed them."
"Shut it." Jughead comments, as he lifts Betty's legs up slowly (and painfully for her) so he could slide into his seat. She stays silent even as her body screams in pain. She wants him there, as close as could be.
"I love you."
"I love you too, Betts." she hears him say as she passes out again.
She came to in the hospital, surrounded by machines, Jughead's arms beside her, his face pressed in sleep against the hospital bed even though his body is on a chair.
The next time she wakes up he is awake, holding her hand. He kisses her cheek gently. It was a good thing she was still covered by her mom's insurance otherwise they would be paying this off forever.
When she wakes up again, he isn't there at all. Instead a nurse is there. She asks Betty a few questions before leaving the room. Five minutes later, Sheriff Keller enters. She wasn't expecting him yet. Was he the reason Jughead was not here?
"Hello Betty."
"Hi Sheriff."
"What happened?"
"I was jumped by strangers. I have no clue why."
"Really?" The sheriff asks in a tone that made it clear he didn't buy it. She nods. "Are you sure Mrs. Jones?" He asks.
Goose bumps emerge from the surface of her skin. "I kept my last name actually."
"Did you get married for the spousal privileges?" The sheriff asks softly. Betty nods. It wasn't the only reason, of course, far from it, but they were worried that if Jug's case went to trial Betty would have to testify without protection unless they married. Thankfully the whole case was thrown out a few weeks later, and they hadn't had to use that privilege yet, but if they continued down this path they would need it at some point.
"Who really did this to you?" The sheriff asks.
"I don't know." Betty replies honestly. She knew the name of the gang, but none of the names of the individuals who did this to her.
The sheriff sets down and takes her hand "Did Jughead do this to you?". Betty laughs in spite of the pain. A look of relief crosses the sheriff's face.
"Ok. I can't do anything if you don't tell me anything." The sheriff says standing up.
"I know."
"Jughead's going home to get your marriage license, by the way. They kicked him out for not being family so he went to get proof."
"Oh." Betty replies, the sheriff could be nicer than he had to be sometimes "Thanks."
"Take care of yourself." Keller says as he leaves. Sometimes Betty wonders if he was so nice to her still because of Kevin.
"I will." She says. She tries to stay awake till Jughead returns but she drifts off again.
When she wakes Jughead is up already, head bent. He is playing with his wedding ring, which he is now wearing on his ring finger.
"How am I doing?" She asks. His head jerks up and he looks at her full of love.
"Good." He said. "They fixed your broken nose, they sewed up the cuts, you are well on the way to mending." His expression looked distant as he says these things.
"What about the leg?" She knew something had to be wrong with it. It still didn't feel right, even with her just lying here, and that was with the pain medication dulling everything.
"They had to do knee surgery. It seems to have helped a lot, but they think you might always limp because of it. It was a mess in there."
Shit. That was not a news update she wanted to here. Her face must have made it clear because Jughead's eyes met hers, and he said "I am so sorry, Betty. So sorry."
Last time when she'd been jumped by the Ghoulies he had said he was going to leave her, for her own safety, but apparently the talking to she'd given him then, had convinced him not to go down that path again - thank goodness.
"We are no longer selling drugs. I realized as long as we stay in that game we are going to have other gangs gunning for us. It's never going to stop, no matter how many we take down. We are getting out." He says. He looks at her as if he expects her to fight him on this one, but she's not going to.
"I agree."
"You do?" He is clearly shocked. After what had happened with the Ghoulies it was her who had talked him into still dealing.
"I do."
"Thank goodness. I mean we can try and figure out another way to support the Serpents. But if we can't, it doesn't really matter to me. You're my top priority."
Betty finds herself smiling in spite of the pain. "That is good, but I think I've figured out a different way to support the Serpents already."
"Oh?"
"I actually had already started researching it before I was kidnapped."
Jughead looks at her curiously. "So, what is it?"
"It is going to sound outlandish at first…." Betty stopped talking for a minute, because she knew this wasn't going to be an easy sell, and she wasn't sure she had the energy for it at the moment.
"Go on."
"What do you think about robbing banks?"
Jughead laughs, a true belly rumble of a laugh. "The nurses didn't mention anything about a head injury."
TBC…
Notes: It is strange, because based on the show I didn't really like the Serpent plot lines at all, but a number of fanfiction stories changed my mind completely, including Snakes and Crowns, girls girls girls in neon lights, I Can See You (Battling Your Demons), Drive, King of the Clouds, and Serpents and Ponytails. So I found myself writing this.
The next chapter is set in a whole different decade but after that time leap the story stays in that period.
This is cross posted on AO3
I would very much appreciate any and all feedback. I really don't have the time to write this fic (I have a six month old, a three year old, and a fulltime job), it just happened anyway.