A/N: There is an OC entering in this chapter. I'm picturing him kind of like Bill Skarsgard.

Chapter song: Touch - Sleeping At Last. Such a beautiful song!

Disclaimer: Characters are not mine! Except for the new Serpent in this chapter.

Part IV – A Single Touch

When will I feel this
As vivid as it truly is,
Fall in love in a single touch,
And fall apart when it hurts too much?

I know, I know - the sirens sound
Just before the walls come down.
Pain is a well-intentioned weatherman
Predicting God as best he can,
But God I want to feel again.

Toni stared down at the phone in her lap with a deeply furrowed brow. She had tried several password variations for Cheryl's cellphone and she was still locked out. She had tried playing with their wedding anniversary, the date of their engagement, their first date – nothing. Remembering that her beloved could be a tad self-centered from time to time, she tried Cheryl's birthday, the year she graduated high school, the year the Blossoms funded the newly minted town of Riverdale. Hell, she even tried the year that Prada was founded.

She seemed no closer to listening to all of those unheard messages.

She felt like she was overlooking something obvious; she just couldn't pinpoint it.

She laid the phone down when she heard a knock on her trailer door. She padded to the door, still in her pajamas, an oversized crewneck sweater and shorts, and opened it to find F.P. with his hands in his jeans pockets. She hadn't apologized to either Jones for her lashing out, but neither of them were strangers to being slaves to their emotions.

She didn't need to apologize in words right now, they were her family and they understood.

She leaned against the doorframe of the trailer and crossed her arms over chest. "What can I do for you, F.P.?"

"We got a new recruit. Thought you might be interested in seeing him through the trials?"

It was something that she had done for many Serpents, including Jughead. She was an unofficial facilitator of sorts. Both a tutor and a source of encouragement, but perhaps most importantly, she was able to discern whether or not a recruit was harbouring any doubts. She was good at reading people, she always had been.

She gave a small nod in the affirmative and F.P. stepped aside to reveal a boy. He was certainly no older than seventeen. He was as tall as Sweet Pea and as skinny as Jughead, but with rather delicate, almost feminine, facial features, and very pale skin. He wore dark jeans and a dark hoodie underneath a dark, heavy jacket. His jet black hair was neatly combed to the side, and honestly, he looked a little too put together to be looking to get into the Serpents. He didn't scream "Northsider", but he wasn't a familiar face either.

She tilted her head to gesture behind her. "Come on in, Beanpole."

F.P. chuckled as he turned to walk away, trusting the hopeful, would be young Serpent to her.

The boy closed the trailer door behind him as she moved to the kitchen to make coffee.

"Want a coffee?" She called softly, running a hand through her hair and fighting a yawn.

The voice that responded was meek and mild. "Yeah, sure, thanks."

"So what's your name kid?" She asked as she brought him a mug.

"Daniel."

"And what's your story, Dan?"

Daniel stayed silent as he stood near the door and awkwardly accepted the cup of coffee. He looked down into the steaming, black liquid before he raised his head and glanced around the small trailer. "What's your story?" He countered stubbornly.

She chuckled as she folded herself into the armchair in the corner so that he was still in her direct line of sight. "Nice try," she quipped. "So you wanna be a Serpent?"

"So you're in a gang," Cheryl began curiously, "and they're called the Serpents?"

Toni chuckled silently as they lay next to each other on her bed. She tried not to get too distracted by Cheryl's fingers on her ribs, tracing the very tattoo that signified the deepest bond in her life, but it was terribly difficult. She felt her entire body jump every time the redhead's long fingernails dug into her skin just a tad more deliberately.

"Yeah, I am," she answered honestly. "Have been since I was fifteen."

"What's that like?" The gorgeous girl asked excitedly.

"Probably not as exciting as you think," she grinned. Cheryl pouted, actually fucking pouted, and Toni couldn't stop herself from leaning in to kiss her. "But I do have a motorcycle."

Cheryl hummed, a grin slowly spreading across her face. She continued to trace the snake tattoo on her ribcage, beneath her black sports bra, as she tangled their feet together. "That's very hot," she breathed huskily.

Toni opened her mouth, to say what she wasn't sure, but she was interrupted by Cheryl's mouth on hers. The taller girl rolled her onto her back, one hand still on her one and only tattoo, and the other in her hair. The brunette whimpered and gripped slim hips. "I'm appealing to your rebellious side, aren't I?" She teased through hungry, stirring kisses.

"Completely," Cheryl sighed.

"Yeah, I do," Daniel answered quietly. He had finally taken a seat on the couch. "I don't have anywhere else to go."

Toni simply nodded. She had felt the same exact way when she had petitioned F.P. Jones to join the Serpents. With an ailing grandfather that she loved dearly, but did not have the capacity to take care of her, and an uncle that barely had the decency to leave his trailer unlocked at night, she had seen the Serpents as the only way to ever belong to a family. A real family that would love her no matter what, and support her, and always have her back.

"You're a Serpent by blood, right?" He asked.

"Yeah," she responded with a nod. "My grandfather was one of the founding members."

"Cool," he muttered. He chewed on his bottom lip, seemingly debating something, before he spoke again. "My older brother is a Ghoulie," he confessed. "But I-I don't want to be like him."

So that's why he didn't look familiar to her. He had grown up on the Southside, that much was clear to her in just the way that he spoke, but he hadn't grown up on Serpent territory. She wouldn't have seen him running through the trailer park as a child or playing on the nearby playground.

A Ghoulie by blood, very interesting.

"You know everyone is going to make this really hard for you?"

Crossing gang lines on the Southside was unheard of, and unpredictable. The boys were certainly going to make life rough for him. They wouldn't trust him and it would take the kid a lot more than the trials to earn their trust and respect. He would have to prove himself worthy like no other.

Not to mention the possible repercussions from the Ghoulies once they saw one of their own in a Serpent jacket.

"Yeah, I know," he sighed loudly.

"And F.P. knows?"

He just nodded.

He looked around the living room, and she watched him carefully, wondering what exactly he was looking for. She tensed when she saw his eyes drawn to the box of photographs that she had taken from her old apartment. The box was sitting near the coffee table, within his reach. The frame that was on the very outside, the one most visible to prying eyes, was the black and white one. Her very favourite. Cheryl looking over her shoulder with those big, brown eyes and that pretty smile and that sculpted jawline.

The way that she stared and sat in silence didn't deter him from answering the inevitable question. It had been a decade since she had been a teenager and teenage boys still weren't the brightest.

"Who's the girl?"

The brunette instinctively clutched the chain around her neck. "I'm supposed to be learning everything about you, not the other way around. I've already completed my initiation."

He either didn't take the bluntest hint ever, or decided to ignore it. "She's important to you."

She was irritated by his line of conversation, but the fact that he wasn't jumping right to "that's your dead wife, isn't it?" made her realize that he didn't actually know anything about her. Or Cheryl. Or about her and Cheryl. And she liked that.

"Yeah," she finally whispered.

"They're important to you, huh?" Cheryl asked as she sat with her back against the headboard and flipped through a stack of old photos that Toni kept in her bedside table.

Toni closed the closet door after finding a warm sweater to crawl into and then she joined Cheryl on the bed. "Who?"

Cheryl turned to her with a smile and an expression that screamed 'duh'. "The Serpents obviously. There are so many pictures of you and all these rowdy boys."

She dramatically fell onto her back and grinned. "My boys!"

Cheryl's hand fell to Toni's thigh, like it was natural for them to be in constant contact. "You were a cute kid," she stated with a bright smile.

Toni didn't even try to fight back a broad smile in return. "Thank you."

Cheryl returned to looking through the photographs in her hands, snippets of Toni's childhood, and Toni looked up at her thoughtfully. They weren't even officially an item and yet they had spent almost every moment together since their first date. Lounging around her trailer, and talking, and a lot of not talking. Somehow, it didn't feel too early for her to be talking about the Serpents and handing over some of her most precious memories.

Everything with Cheryl just felt different.

"What are you thinking so hard about?" The redhead asked in a whisper, her eyes never leaving the photo she was looking at.

"Your impeccable jawline," she lied with a laugh.

"It's important that you're serious about this," Toni started as her and Daniel took a walk around Sunnyside Trailer Park. She had pulled on a pair of jeans and a beanie to fight the crisp fall air, and had suggested a walk as a way to get out of her trailer. "If you go through with this, people are going to be willing to die for you so you need to be sure that you are too. If you can't say yes to that, then we can't start this."

"I'm serious," he responded, with just a hint of teenage petulance. "I told you about my brother," he mentioned after a pause. "He wants me to be a drug runner. It might be naïve and stupid, but I want my life to be more than that."

She replied quickly, "It's not stupid."

He scuffed the toe of his booth as he asked, "So, what do you do for a living?"

"Well." She tilted her head and scrunched up her nose. "I was a photographer."

"Ah, the photos," he spoke in realization. "Was?"

"I haven't sold anything in a while," she answered honestly. "So was it is."

They did a wide loop around the trailer park and he waited to speak again until they were back to her home. She leaned against her motorcycle while he took a seat on her steps. He pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his jacket pocket and wordlessly offered her one. Despite the temptation, she shook her head and watched him smoothly flick his lighter.

"It has to do with the girl doesn't it?" He asked after he had taken his first drag of the cigarette.

"What does?"

"The was," he supplied perceptively.

Toni chuckled to herself under her breath and scratched the end of her nose. Perhaps Daniel was a little smarter than she had initially given him credit for.

She pushed herself off of her bike and headed towards her car.

"Hey," Daniel called as he jumped to his feet. "Where are you going?"

She didn't answer his question, but she did say, "I'll tell F.P. you're ready for the first trial!"

Cheryl leaned back against the trailer door and bit down on her bottom lip, her eyes looking at Toni and searching for something. "Is this weird?"

"What?" Toni asked eagerly as she hooked both of her index fingers through the belt loops of a pair of high waist jeans that Cheryl had borrowed.

"That I don't want to leave?"

Toni shook her head with an irrepressible smile on her face. "No, because I don't want you to go."

She had never met a girl so gorgeous, so intelligent, so sensational.

"My brother hasn't stopped calling me," she sighed. "I should really get home and put his mind at ease."

Toni took a step closer so that their bodies were flush once more, and she nudged Cheryl's nose with her own so that she could tilt her head for a kiss. "Yeah," she whispered between kisses. "You should really get home."

Cheryl whined and followed her mouth as Toni slowly pulled away. "Not fair," the redhead murmured.

Toni laughed softly, but she had no qualms about pressing the girl against the trailer door and kissing her harder. Cheryl's hands slipped underneath the back of her sweater and held her in place. Knowing that Cheryl wanted her just as much was an incredibly powerful feeling, and one that spurred on the eagerness of her kisses.

"What if you just stayed one more night?" Toni bargained breathlessly. "And called your brother to let him know where you are?"

Cheryl nodded repeatedly before joining their mouths again, and Toni wondered if this was what falling in love felt like.

Toni walked into the New York City gallery with even, measured steps. She knew that it would be empty, as it was just before closing, so her boots echoed more unnaturally than usual. She adjusted the black beanie on the top of her head as she glanced around at the current exhibit – some kind of abstract paintings. It wasn't her cup of tea. Cheryl would love it.

She walked further into the gallery and eventually, the sound of her steps alerted the gallery's only occupant to her presence.

Veronica Lodge, dressed in a lovely black dress and her mother's pearls, spun around and faced her with a stunned expression.

"Toni Topaz," she stated in awe before she moved as fast as her expensive shoes could carry her.

Toni couldn't fight off her hug even if she wanted to. She melted into her friend's embrace and wrapped both of her arms around her back.

Veronica pulled away with a laugh, but Toni could see the unshed tears shimmering in her dark eyes. "You know," she began with a grin that was a tad forced. "I adore this whole Courtney Love thing you've got going on, but it's really good to see you."

"It's really good to see you too," she answered honestly.

"I assume you heard my messages?" Toni nodded and Veronica took her hand to lead her to her office in the very back of the gallery. "Come on, let's talk."

They reached Veronica's office and settled on the leather couch. Toni noticed that Veronica did not sit very far away, giving her security in the physical proximity.

"How are you?" The dark-haired girl asked softly. The question was unavoidable so it may as well be out there.

Toni considered her words very carefully. She was still angry, bitter, ill-tempered, lost, depressed... There was no good way to answer without an emotional outburst, so she went for concise and truthful. "I am… here."

Veronica smiled sadly. "And I'm so glad."

Toni cleared her throat and spoke before Veronica could say something else that was genuine, yet entirely sappy. "And how are you?" She countered.

Veronica, clearly used to handling that inquiry with much more grace than her, spoke in a clear voice. "I miss her. I miss her a lot. I can't stop looking at the photographs of yours that we have here. I want to show them off," she said determinedly.

The Serpent shifted on the sofa and crossed her arms over her chest. "Veronica," she sighed. "I don't know… I… I'm not the same person I was when I took those photos. They're not me anymore."

"You don't have to be that person," she offered supportively. "You can let the photos tell the story."

Toni stared down at her lap as she pondered that idea. Could she really do that? Could she walk into this gallery and see her most important work on display and feel so emotionally disconnected? Or even worse, could she look at those photos and feel that array of confusing, messy feelings rushing back? The particular series that Veronica wanted to showcase was emotional for a lot of different reasons, and not just because of Cheryl. There were other people and relationships involved. She didn't want to hurt anybody, and she didn't want to hurt anymore.

She could just avoid all of that by saying no, and yet…

"Can I have a day or two to think about it?"

Veronica eagerly nodded. "Yes, of course. Why don't we get brunch tomorrow? Just the two of us."

Toni accepted her offer with a genuine smile. "I would like that."

A/N: I feel like this chapter has a filler quality to it, but I tried to connect the flashbacks in a subtle way, and those flashbacks in particular are important for the next chapter! Please leave a review! :)