They drive too fast to the hospital the next day, a change of clothes and bagels for Veronica's parents on the seat between them. Hiram and Hermione and Alice and Hal and FP and Fred - they all look like hell, but Betty and Jughead look alright, considering. Jug is groggy and sallow and Betty's got an IV taped to the back of her hand. They both have bruises and deep cuts on their visible skin.
Veronica has fifty things to tell Betty but none of them say anything, and she sits on the edge of the bed while they watch the Today Show, an incredibly boring segment about finding the best Spring produce. It makes her want strawberries. She fidgets. She thinks of how shocked Betty will be when she finds out Veronica might have been the cause of the crash, or if that's just the kind of bad luck she expects from being friends with her after all this time.
She watches as Betty scribbles on a notepad, ideas for her next Blue & Gold article. It makes her feel weirdly endeared, because Betty refuses to give up on the newspaper business - which isn't dead yet, but is definitely on life support - and for the past six months, she's refused to give up on Veronica, too.
She looks at Jughead then, who she's never been as close to - she and him are like two shooting stars on totally different trajectories - but her whole body stiffens at the thought of him lying dead on the side of the road.
"You two scared me," she tells them finally. She wants to say I'm sorry but doesn't know where to start. "Don't do it again."
"We'll try our best," Jughead says, nodding and leaning back against the pillows, the skin beneath his eyes pale and gray. "Mrs. Cooper already read us the riot act."
"Did they find out who ran you off the road?" Archie asks. Veronica feels suspended in space.
Betty shakes her head and looks at Veronica. "No," she says, "but V, your dad was in here a little while ago asking us all sorts of questions about what happened. He said he's going to hand it all off to the police." She shrugs. "It felt a little weird, though."
Veronica's heart lands somewhere around her shoes. "Oh my God," she says, feeling a headache coming on. "I'm sorry."
Betty dismisses that particular sentiment, says Veronica didn't do anything wrong so what is she apologizing for?
Veronica presses her lips together and tries as hard as she can to release the tension in her shoulders, to relax. Still, she's not exactly at ease and the hospital isn't offering a whole lot by way of distraction. By eight o'clock, her mother steps into the room and asks Veronica to come with her.
"What is it?" she hisses as Hermione leads her down the ghostly halls. She doesn't get a glance, much less a response. They round a corner and her mother pulls her through a door and into the chapel. Below the cross, a taciturn Virgin Mary holds court at the alter, a missing chunk of plaster where her veil should meet her dress. Hiram is standing there illuminated in the orange glow, an effigy or idol. For all the times she's seen him in church, it's never stopped feeling like something stilted or forced, as if someone like him could never belong in a place like this.
Veronica walks down the carpeted aisle and joins him. She runs her thumb over the statue, waiting. Hermione prays to Mary for virtually everything and swears that she answers every time, but if either this mother or Veronica's have any advice to dispense, at the moment they are holding their tongues.
"I saw them last night," Hiram says solemnly, looking at the statue and not at Veronica. "The people who have been threatening us."
It's so sudden she thinks she's misheard him. For a second she only stares at him, recalibrating, but then he continues.
"They were the ones who caused your friends to crash. As a warning of what they believe they're capable of doing to you." It looks as if it's physically painful for him to say it, as if the words taste like gravel or bone. "They said they want us to hand over Lodge Industries and move out of Riverdale."
Veronica thinks maybe she's turning into a statue too, cement for lungs and plaster for skin. "Who are they?" she asks on an exhale.
"Lodge Industries investors."
"Okay." She doesn't know what to say. Her intuition was right. It was her fault. She has to tell Betty. She has to tell Jughead. She has to tell - oh, God.
Archie had said it himself, she tries to reason - "Either way, Ronnie, it's not your fault." But his saying that in the dead of night without confirmation or assurance is different than how he might react to the vindicated truth; that his two best friends in the entire world nearly died because of her.
"Veronica," her father says. He clenches his hands together tight, the skin going taut around his knuckles. Veronica feels guilty. Not for anything she actually did, but for what she isn't doing. Which is protecting the people she cares about. And answering her father. "We want to send you to New York to stay with your abuelita for awhile."
That makes Veronica's head snap up. "I'm sorry?" She says, and her voice sounds irrationally shrill even to her own ears, the noise reverberating through the acoustics in the chapel. "No. I won't go," she declares with instantaneous finality, not caring that she's showing blatant disobedience right in front of Jesus and Mary. She shakes her head. "No."
"We need to keep you safe," Hiram argues, "and that won't be possible when we're fighting what could quite literally become an all out war."
"So you think the solution is to make me disappear? We might as well be saying, 'your scare tactics worked.' I'm not leaving, Daddy, and if you send me to Abuelita's, I'll run away and come right back to Riverdale." She shifts her gaze back to the statue. "Let me help," she says. "This is my-"
"Absolutely not," Hiram snaps, every muscle locked. "You can stay in Riverdale, fine. We'll assign a bodyguard to you at all times. But you will not be involved in the negotiations."
Veronica side eyes him. There's adrenaline coursing through her and she feels like she could run a marathon. "Negotiations?"
"And whatever else we have to do to protect our family and our livelihood."
Hermione is staring up at the Virgin Mary, her gaze fixated and her expression somber. "We're going to battle, Veronica," she says smoothly, "for you. For the company. To ensure the safety of our entire family." Finally she looks at her daughter, eyes boring holes into her. Veronica thinks she might actually throw up, right here on the velvet carpet in the hospital chapel. "You need to think about what needs to be done to ensure the safety of your friends. And," she says frankly, "Archie."
"If you're with your abuelita, it's likely that these terrorists would be less inclined to make examples out of them," Hiram adds.
That makes Veronica explode. "Give up Lodge Industries!" She exclaims, and her parents look at her like she's got three heads. "These people tried to kill my friends! They almost succeeded! Why aren't you taking them seriously?!"
"We are taking them seriously, Veronica-"
"Don't."
That stops them. It stops her too, as a matter of fact, like there's no further explanation required, and the entire chapel is suddenly silent. Veronica is scared out of her mind, but even more than that, she's angry. She feels it pushing up from somewhere deep inside of her, red and powerful.
"You haven't cared about my feelings or asked me how I was doing in years," she tells her father, piercing. She thinks of broken dams, walls caving in. "You don't talk to me. No one talks to me. About me, maybe, but maybe not, even. I wouldn't know, because this is the first time in my life that you've told me something significant." She glances at Hermione, her gaze darting like a cornered animal. "So, you know, tell your investors I said thanks for getting me into the club."
"Veronica-" her mother says sharply, but she ignores her, looking at her father instead. This is crazy - like something out of a melodrama - but the truth is she's just getting started. Already she feels more powerful than she has in months.
"I'm not a moron," she says, bristling. "I've made mistakes, but I'm not generally stupid. You've made it pretty clear that that's how you see me, and that's fine, but I can't just sit here and put on a show and… pretend anymore. I've been pretending for years." She pauses for a second, looks at her mother whose eyes are hard and angry. "And now you're choosing your company over my life and the lives of my friends!"
"Veronica," says Hiram. His face has gone dark as a tomato, his eyebrows drawn together in a thick line. "Calm down."
"I can't," she shoots back, but even as the words come out she can feel her voice start to break. God, she doesn't want to cry - crying now is going to make her look crazy, is going to undermine everything she's trying to say - but she can't help it. She's so hugely tired of carrying all of this inside her, all her guilt and anger and loneliness. She can't do it anymore. It's too much. "I'm sorry if I disappoint you, Daddy, and I'm sorry I don't feel the same loyalty to Lodge Industries that you do and that you think I'm a liability and an idiot and every other awful thing," she's sobbing now, and her mother's lovely face is blurry and distorted through her tears. "And maybe I deserve it and maybe I don't but the point is that my loyalty lies with the people I love. Innocent people. And I don't know what I did wrong when I was twelve years old and started wondering about the business, and then you stopped caring about me, stopped checking on me, stopped wanting to be around me, but I wish you would just forgive me already. How can you be my parents and not forgive me?" She shakes her head, and there's not a single thing she can do to calm down. "I mean it! Why did you only love me when I was blind?"
She turns on her mother. "And ensure the safety of Archie and my friends? Really? Like the answer isn't obvious? Like the answer is anything other than the fact that you aren't taking these investors seriously? And don't try to tell me you are, because if you were, you would have given up Lodge Industries hours ago." She pushes past them, heading for the door and into a blinding shock of light without another word.
…
Archie is in the waiting room when she bursts into it, aiming for the exit. The sight of him could make her jump out of her skin if she wasn't still so heated from the ordeal in the chapel.
"Veronica," he begins, standing up, alarm and concern etched across every single one of his features when he sees her. "What's-"
She swipes at her eyes. "Can I have the car keys?" She asks. "Can you get a ride home with your dad?" It feels selfish to ask, but she needs to get far away from this place, and she doesn't want Archie to get hurt by the storm erupting inside her.
Archie holds out the keys, but says, "Veronica, whatever happened, please talk to me about it. Or let me-"
She takes the keys and makes for the doors, and he stays glued to her heels across the expanse of the parking lot. He catches the driver's side door just as she's about to slam it, and she grimaces.
"I almost took your fingers off."
"It's okay. Got quick reflexes."
She blinks and sits back, and he opens the door wider, maneuvers himself in between so she can't try and close it again. "Let me come with you, okay?"
She shakes her head, sniffling. "This is a long ride."
"That's okay."
"I'm doing the highway with no destination."
"I don't mind."
Her insides feel like they've been hollowed out. She doesn't know how things got so out of control. She shrugs and wipes her face, jerks her head toward the passenger side. "Then get in," she tells him.
They're ten minutes onto the freeway before either of them says anything, and when he does his voice is quiet, the ocean at low tide. "Did something happen with your mom and dad?"
"I am very, very disappointing to my family," she says quietly. She concentrates on the road and tries to sound collected, matter-of-fact, resigned. She's humiliated to have cried the way she did, tries to reason that it was a long time coming but can't even empathize with herself. "And they're disappointing to me, actually. They want to send me to New York to stay with my grandmother until everything blows over. They think I'll be safer."
Archie shakes his head. "They want you in New York with no one to protect you except her?" He scrubs at his hair with restless hands.
"It might put you in less danger," she says calmly, "if the people who sent the box try to come after you to make a point." She had to say it, but still she tries to shutter the notion out, like maybe if she keeps driving forever, nothing will ever be able to hurt him. If Archie died, the sun would go out. Period.
"It's not my life that's in danger," Archie refutes. "I'm going to protect you, Veronica, and you shouldn't be worrying about me."
"How could I not?" She whispers. She almost tells him that her father confirmed the cause of Betty and Jughead's accident. Keeping that secret is like having hot burning coals under her bare feet, though it's been less than half an hour. "I can't do anything that puts your life at risk. I wouldn't be able to take it, and your family-" she trails off, swallowing, afraid she'll start crying again.
Archie reaches over to hold her hand. "You're my family, too."
They drive for over an hour, not really talking. Archie hums under his breath. It feels peaceful to be in the car with him, steadying, like he and Veronica are in their own little world, totally unbothered by the one rolling by outside. She knows eventually she'll have to go back and face the music,but she finally feels something akin to calm, and Archie's breathing beside her, and for awhile it's nice to pretend.
Eventually, she pulls into his driveway and they say passing greetings to Fred as they walk by him at the entryway. They go up to his room and Veronica listens to him play his guitar, the notes pouring out like rain from the heavens. Her eyes burn and she presses the heel of her hand against her forehead as she tries to forget about what happened. Forgetting feels like a constant goal. She hopes there will come a day she'll actually want to remember.
After awhile, she touches his hands, makes him put his guitar down. She pulls him onto the bed. The sun is setting outside and she kisses him, tugs at the hem of his shirt, which makes him pull back to look at her. His eyes turn a deep topaz color, birthstones in the dark. "Are you sure?" he asks, and his voice is low.
"Yes." She's surprised at the steadiness of her own voice. His fingers clench and unclench; she takes one of his fists and forces it open, places her own hand inside. "I'm sure." Outside, through the open window, she can hear rain starting to fall. Her spine hits the sheets softly.
Archie hums around her temple and the curve of his neck feels familiar. She gets her arms around him to keep from flying apart at her joints and they're holding onto each other like it's the last day when all of a sudden, all at once, Archie goes completely still.
"Tell me this isn't your way of saying goodbye," he orders quietly. He's not moving at all.
"Hmm?" she says into his shoulder. She looks up. He's balancing on his forearms as he hovers over her. "What?"
"Tell me you're not thinking you're going to die and this is - you're not going to die, Veronica. Just - tell me," he repeats, and in the dark flash of his eyes she can see this is very important to him, some kind of promise he's made to himself. He doesn't want her to make him do this without saying the words. "Ronnie." He's almost pleading. "Say it."
Don't do this to me, she wants to say. "Archie," she murmurs, thumb skating across his eyebrow, trying to stall. "Come on."
He looks right at her. "Say it."
Her heart is knocking away inside her chest. "I can't," she whispers finally. "I'm sorry."
He closes his eyes for a second and she braces, fully expecting him to roll away from her. But then:
"Okay," Archie says on a long, quiet exhale. She can feel his ribs expand and contract against her chest. "It's okay."
"We can stop if you want," she offers, head swimming. "I get it if you want to stop."
Archie smiles down at her, quick and vanishing. "I don't want to stop."
So they keep going.
It's vaguely heartbreaking to do this after all that's happened, the telltale hitches in his breathing and the way her entire body tenses, the things they haven't done since everything went to hell forty eight hours ago. The back of his knee is warm when she tucks her foot there. His hand is cool when he wraps it around her wrists on the pillow above her head. He looks at her the whole entire time.
When it's over they lie on their sides facing each other for what might be days, streetlamps and the sound of the wind in the trees outside the window. She feels the weight of his gaze like something physical, a sheen of sweat coating her skin. Finally she can't hold it in anymore; just breathing is like a hurricane. "Seattle," she says.
He raises one eyebrow. "Seattle?"
"I think 'everywhere' should start in Seattle."
He smiles at her, and they both turn onto their backs, their bodies pressed together as closely as possible.
Veronica breathes in and Archie joins her, and he can see her smiling even though he's looking straight up at the ceiling. They exhale together, then inhale together, exhale, inhale, in, out, until not even the walls of their homes remember what's happened this week.
"Seattle it is," he tells her like a certainty, and they fall asleep after that.
...
When Veronica gets home her father is in the kitchen cooking rice and chicken, skinless and low-fat. "Hi," she says.
Her father nods at her, impassive.
"I was at Archie's," she tells him.
"So I heard," he nods again.
"I spent the night," she continues.
"So I heard." Mother of God, he nods a third time.
Oh, come off it, she almost snaps. Instead she takes a deep breath, steadying. "All right," she says, surrendering. No one in her family is much of an emoter, but her father can out-silence anybody, including Veronica. "Can we address this situation?"
"What's that?"
That makes her mad. "You know what," she says, an edge in her voice she can't totally file down. "Everything we talked about at the hospital yesterday. All of this."
Her father sets the knife down and it clatters loudly into the basin, making her jump. "Veronica, I don't see what there is to talk about. You know how your mother and I feel. We can try our best to keep you safe, but ultimately, you make your own choices." This morning's paper sits on the table, and he opens it to the international news. The wooden box is gone. "There's food," he says, without looking up.
"Okay," she says finally, and slowly leaves the room.
Not so long ago, in her English class, they read about the Renaissance and how, for a long time afterward, it was almost impossible for Italian artists to make anything. All that history already there, they figured. What was the point?