A/N: Dialogue in italics is from the show, not mine. Anyone else counting down the minutes to the episode tonight?
"I think we may have hit a dead end," Jughead said suddenly Friday afternoon. He and Betty were lying on her bed watching movies, as they often did, her head on his chest and his arm around her shoulder, his cheek resting softly against the top of her head.
Betty turned her head to look up at him, noticing his brows drawn together in thought. She assumed he was talking about Jason's murder, but for a moment she worried that he meant them, their relationship. "What makes you say that?"
"I've been thinking about that foreclosure. All I can find in the town tax records is that it was repossessed from a Daniel Lodge and sold in '98, that would be the year before Jason and Cheryl were born. That makes it seem significant, but I can't think of how. And I don't think we're going to find anything else there that will help us. I think we need to focus on your sister, finding her, finding out exactly what went down with the families relating to that."
"Yeah, okay," Betty suddenly seemed downcast, a stark contrast to how peaceful she had been moments before.
"What is it?" Jughead asked, worried. "I mean, besides everything?"
"She wouldn't have run away if it wasn't for me, Jug."
Betty looked so upset it broke Jughead's heart, she really believed she was to blame for whatever danger her sister might be in. He supposed excessive guilt was one of the perks of growing up with Alice Cooper and he hated her a little for it. "Betty, your parents were the ones lying to her, and keeping her in the dark. You did the right thing, telling her the truth."
She seemed to take some comfort at his words and wrapped an arm around him, pulling him closer and smiling slightly. "It's funny," she said, "this isn't the first time Polly's run away from home. She was nine and she and my mom got in this huge fight and she disappeared for hours. The whole neighbourhood was out looking for her," Betty laughed gently into Jughead's chest.
"How far did she get?" he asked, loving seeing Betty smile again.
Her expression quickly morphed into something else though, as she opened her mouth to answer him. She kissed him quickly and sat up before proclaiming "the attic!" and hopping off her bed.
Jughead, sensing her train of though, followed behind as she let herself into her parents' room to retrieve the flashlight her father kept in his nightstand, and then opened the door to the attic stairs and walked up.
"Polly?" she called softly, shining the light around the dim space. "It's okay, you can come out, it's just me and Jughead."
Jughead looked around him at the artifacts of the sisters' childhoods stored in the room. Despite Alice's questionable parenting strategies, it was clear from the numerous boxes labelled "Betty" and "Polly" with their ages that she was immensely proud of her daughters. Or at least, she had been until Polly's pregnancy.
Spotting a box labelled simply "High School," Jughead moved closer, wondering if it belonged to one of the girls and just hadn't been labelled that way, or if it belonged to one of the Cooper parents and, if so, if it could shed any light on the Cooper-Blossom feud that seemed to run much deeper than the scars left by an old maple syrup empire.
Hearing a disruption from the corner where Betty was standing, he turned to see her and Polly catching each other by the arms and falling into a tight hug. Deciding to give them some privacy, Jughead leaned over and opened the lid of the box. Inside were various remnants of a high school life that had clearly passed — awards, copies of the school paper, pom-poms, shockingly, and four yearbooks, the last one from 1986. Judging by the pom-poms (he assumed Hal Cooper had never been a cheerleader), Jughead guessed that must have been the year Alice graduated from Riverdale High. Betty and Polly were discussing things quietly, still holding each other close, and he heard Betty say she was going to get some supplies from the bathroom to clean up Polly's cut. Remembering the blood on her broken window Jughead panicked and looked over quickly, but saw that her leg was bleeding but her stomach seemed fine. Betty rushed over towards Jughead as he was still closer to the stairs than she was.
"Can you stay with her?" she asked. She looked so hopeful, Jughead couldn't have said no if he had wanted to. She was clearly beyond happy about finding Polly but he recognized the tinge of disbelief on her face — hope that this person she loved so much wouldn't leave again. It was an expression Jughead knew well.
"Of course, we'll be right here. I'll entertain her with my dazzling conversational skills."
"Thank you Juggie," she kissed him quickly and ran down the stairs.
Jughead moved over to sit on the windowsill by Polly, trying to figure out how one acted personable. He decided that staring wouldn't be a great start, so he mostly looked at the floor, glancing up at her occasionally. Luckily, Polly was as much of a natural friend as her sister, and she soon came to his rescue.
"So," she started, "you and Betty, huh?"
Jughead looked up nervously, but saw that she was smiling at him. "Yeah, um, it's pretty new, but, yeah."
He couldn't help but berate himself internally on his lack of eloquence.
"I'm glad, she seems happy. Really happy, not the fake happy she's been for the past while. Although, I guess I haven't seen her in a while really, not since before she left for LA…" Polly trailed off, seeming upset with herself for this, as if she thought it was her fault her parents had locked her up. "But I'm here now," she said, smiling again. "At least until I can go somewhere better, and then you and Betty can come visit."
Polly's inclusion of Jughead in her plan touched him more than she could have known.
"So that's still your plan then?" he asked her. "Moving out and raising the baby?"
"Yes," she said simply, confidently. "I thought about it before I decided to leave the home. I know it'll be harder without Jason, but this is what I want."
"I'm glad," Jughead said hesitantly. "Something good should come out of this."
He heard Betty's footsteps coming back up the stairs and he and Polly both looked up at her as she walked back over to them, moving to sit in a rocking chair that she positioned across from Polly and patting her own thigh, inviting her sister to give her her wounded leg.
"Alright, let's get you fixed up now and figure out what we're going to do," she said, tearing open awn alcohol wipe and beginning to clean the dirt out of Polly's cut. "I know you think Mom and Dad want you to give the baby up, and I don't doubt that they did want that, but now that everyone knows you're pregnant there's no reason. You could come home, raise the baby here," Betty looked so hesitantly hopeful, Jughead wouldn't have thought Alice Cooper's mind could be changed by anything, but Betty's obvious determination made him question that.
"And if they still won't agree," she said, lifting her head to smile boldly at Polly, "we'll figure something out in the meantime. I'll help you get a job, find an apartment, you can be independent and raise your baby without leaving Riverdale."
Betty turned the conversation to possible jobs and baby names and fell into a comfortable chatter with Polly, Jughead contributing occasionally, while she continued to clean and dress her sister's leg. When they were finished, Polly stood and hugged Betty, and told her to get back downstairs before their parents arrived home, asking her not to tell them that she knew where Polly was. When Betty agreed, she released her and hugged Jughead too, surprising him. The hug was a bit awkward, since he didn't usually hug, and this was his girlfriend's sister who he hadn't had a real conversation with in years, and she had that bump that Jughead didn't want to hurt, but the sentiment was nice, and he decided he liked Polly, not just because her being back made Betty so happy.
When he and Betty turned to leave the attic, he remembered to grab the yearbooks from the box, carrying them down to Betty's room to go over on the slim chance that a glance into Alice and Hal's high school years would shed some light on the tensions between the two families.
"What are those?" Betty asked when they were back in her room.
"Your mom's high school yearbooks," Jughead answered, before he realized that might sound weird. "Sorry," he quickly added, "I just figured that your parents and the Blossoms went to school together. There probably won't be anything useful in here but at the very least you can gain some ammunition for the next time Alice Cooper dares to question your appearance. Just on the first page I saw perms and really too many sequins to count."
That got a laugh out of Betty and she grabbed Jughead's free hand and kissed him softly before pulling away, still smiling. "Thank you."
"Anytime Bets, you know that," he answered lightly, but she knew how much he meant it.