Synopsis: It has been six years since Jughead Jones set foot inside Riverdale. A month before he left, his girlfriend Betty Cooper vanished without a trace. And her case has gone cold. Now that he's back, he's determined to find out what happened to Betty Cooper. And whether he's one of the reasons she vanished in the first place.
Genre: Crime/Mystery/Romance
Timeline: Post-Season One. Depending on the events of Season Two will depend on whether it's incorporated into this story.
Pairing: Betty/Jughead
Rating: T
A/N: I know, I know, I know. It's been an age since I last updated. I was extremely busy over the festive period and never found any time to properly focus on this. I hope this extra-long chapter makes up to it.
In response to Guest 'Annon': Good shout! This is completely my fault. At the time I wrote it, I wasn't actually aware that the show was running concurrently with real time – so I thought there was leeway for creative license. Then the Christmas episode appeared at Christmas time irl and I realised I was wrong. I'm sorry! I'll either make the change to Betty disappearing in 2019 or make the baby's event something like first summer party or something. Sorry again and thanks for spotting that!
Chapter Eight
The Photograph
Archie Andrews had imagined for a long time that he was the last person in the world who remembered Betty Cooper. Of course, her family still existed. Alice and Hal and Polly.
But that was different. They would continue, move on with their lives, forget about the daughter who disappeared. He had seen it happen with Polly, with the liveliness of her twins. How thoughts of them had filled up so much of her head that there was no space left for her sister.
And there was Jughead. But he'd abandoned her and therefore he'd forfeited his right to remember her.
But Archie would still be sat there in his room in Riverdale, watching the house across the lawn and remembering the girl who used to wake up in it.
Archie flicks on the kitchen light, rattling the house keys as he flings them onto the table. They collide with the wood in a metallic crash.
"Nothing's changed, huh?" a reluctant Jughead muses behind him, looming in the Andrew's kitchen doorway.
"A lot has changed," Archie answers cryptically as he turns to fill up the kettle. The water gushes from the sink's tap, a crack of sound in the silent room. He dips the kettle spout under it, feeling the weight of the water fill it up. As it reaches the top level, he cranks the tap closed. Silence returns. "Just not the house," he twists his head round to look at what remains of his friend, smiling tentatively.
"Make yourself at home," Archie finally says as he returns the kettle to its stand, flicking on the boiling switch. "I'll put on some coffee."
"I don't need anything to drink," Jughead mutters, a chair scraping as he lowers himself down into it. "Can't risk it being poisoned." His chuckle is low and distracted. It sounds like a joke; but there's a harshness in it that breaks in between them.
Archie shrugs. He leaves the kettle to boil anyway. It fizzes and rumbles, something to fill the silence with.
Archie takes his place in a seat opposite Jughead, leaning his arms over the table and twisting his fingers together. He creaks his mouth open; "So, are you going to tell me what's going on or do I have to guess?"
Jughead Jones, ever the elusive, simply quirks his eyebrow.
Kevin stares at the screen. The black and white image of Betty Cooper fizzles in and out of view. He lets out a skating breath. The date stutters in bright, white font at the bottom of the screen; September 5th 2018.
It's eerie being in a place so familiar. It's as if it's a hologram, a ghost, a shadow of itself. The blender still sits in the exact same place on the kitchen counter, the same number of knives still stabbed into the wooden knife block; nine. Always one away from a complete set.
Time really hasn't changed here.
I shrug in my soaked clothes, feeling the material cling to my skin. Denim is particularly uncomfortable when it's wet.
The water steams as Archie pours it into his mug. It hovers above the porcelain like a tendril of a ghost, before evaporating into the air. I watch with fleeting interest. I'm far more interested in other things.
"I suppose you took the photo then," Archie finally says, his tone more of a statement than a question. He's already assumed the truth.
I don't even need to question which photo he means. I feel the weight of it seeping out from my backpack where it's sat thumped against the leg of my chair.
Archie clearly isn't as oblivious as I'd thought.
Absentmindedly, I pull my soaked hat from my head and let it slop onto the kitchen table.
"Do you want it back?" I ask fleetingly, chewing the inside of my lip and not making a move to retrieve it. It feels like a challenge. I don't waver.
Archie stares back at me, his expression unwavering. He lifts his mug to his lips and sips for far to long before resting it back on the table. The porcelain chinks as it hits the wood. The sound itself is intimidating. "You haven't looked at the note?"
A bare flicker of bewilderment creases his eyebrows before he wipes it away decisively.
My tongue runs dry. A kind of gritty sandpaper. I narrow my eyes at Archie, feeling suspicion run up the back of his neck like spiders. "What note?" My voice sounds strangled. I feel my fingers tense under the table.
Across the table, Archie looks at me for a long moment before he finally speaks carefully; "The one on the back of the photograph."
Kevin has never felt so haunted in his life. The chair squeaks as he drops down into it, his eyes desperate to lean in closer to the screen. Holding his breath – as if the act of breathing could cause him to miss something – Kevin watches the CCTV footage intently.
The camera, angled downwards towards the front door of POP's, swivels gratingly inside the diner and catching every so often. Kevin wonders why POP hadn't invested in better equipment, especially after what had happened to Fred Andrews.
For a moment, it looks uneventful. Pop sloshes a mop out from a bucket, swiping it along the checkered floor in big strides. He passes empty booths, washing sauce stains from the floor and clearing away empty milkshake glasses from a nearby table.
The diner is empty.
Kevin wonders if it has always been this eerie and he hadn't ever noticed it before.
Pop leans on his mop, surveying the hollow diner with greying eyes. Seeming satisfied, he gathers the mop and bucket up with a clatter, dragging them back over to the counter.
He stops. His head pops up.
The door sweeps open. And Betty Cooper walks in.
The photograph drips from my fingers like liquid metal. I clutch onto it, denting it with my thumbs to stop the wind from stealing it. It has already taken the real Betty. It can't take this version of her too.
The air is aggressive outside Archie's house. It bites and gnaws at my already cold, wet skin, slithering down the back of my neck. I hiss at it, sharply pulling up the collar of my jacket only for the soaked material to slump back down.
"No, I didn't send it," I'd scoffed in disbelief when Archie had accused me. The photograph had apparently been slipped through his post box. It dropped onto his welcome mat – clean and pristine with a single, neatly placed postage stamp in the corner – precisely one week ago.
Which wasn't possible. It shouldn't exist.
"I have better things to do than torture people with fake notes," I'd croaked out defensively, skimming my thumb across the back of the photograph in disbelief. Across the bleeding, blue ink used to form letters. A cypher. A signature at the bottom. One that hauntingly resembled the name Betty.
It has to be fake. There's no way it could be real. Could there?
I skim my thumb across it again, feeling the grooves where the pen had scratched into the back of the photograph. Imagining Betty sitting somewhere, writing it determinately. Hiding a secret message in this secret code.
My wet fingerprint smudges part of the ink. It looks like a tear.
"Somebody's messing with you," I'd said resolutely, my eyes unable to unlock from the handwriting that looked so eerily like Betty's, just as Archie, at the same time, had said; "She's still alive, Jug. She has to be."
I had felt my heart plummet at that exact moment. I wish I could have been so sure.
Why wasn't I so sure?
After previous minutes of pacing the floor, he'd swivelled at that exact moment and slammed his palm onto the kitchen table.
I had stared into his wild eyes then. They were aggressive and untamed and hopeful. When was the last time he'd stopped fighting for Betty?
"She has to be," he had repeated, his voice broken and cracked and slipping away. As quickly as it had slammed into mine, his gaze had fleeted away. For a moment, I'd almost felt sorry for him.
The tree outside Archie's house creaks. It feels like it's taunting me. Sneering and waving and existing. I glance up at it looming over me, the branches wild and contorted. It reminds me of the woods.
Leaves have departed it just as I would have. I snort under my breath.
I feel for the photograph firmly in my hand, needing to securely tuck it back into my bag. I'd asked Archie if I could keep it – to which he'd responded with, "You should have asked me that the first time." And so I'd proceeded to ask him if I could have the envelope it arrived in.
Apparently, Archie has developed some organisational skills. He'd murmured that he kept it at his office and he'd get it to me tomorrow.
I'd nodded once in response. I wasn't sure if he ever would.
Hefting to drop my bag from my shoulder, I turn to unzip it just as my eyes catch – through the gnarled branches of the tree – a window.
It's stark white against the night sky. A perfect ladder's distance away from the ground.
My breath shudders. An icy cold chill prickles my skin. I never realised I'd have this violent a reaction at seeing Betty's window again.
Pacing past the battering tree, I move to get a closer look. The curtains are shuttered closed. There is no light seeping through the fabric. For a moment, I can just visualise Betty – as young as beautiful as she always has been – swipe open the curtain with a laugh and yell down at me.
But she doesn't. The curtains stay still. They don't even rattle an inch. It's as if they are dead. As if the room is being hidden from the world. I don't even know if it is her room anymore.
Maybe it's been turned into a gym or a nursery or something else that wipes away the memory of her existence.
I breathe calmly through my nose. There's an ushering of silence, of an odd sense of peace here. The last piece of Betty that exists in the world. The wind whispers around me, repeating her name over and over and over again.
Betty, Betty, Betty.
I wonder if she looked out this window the day she disappeared. Thought about who she was going to meet at the bus stop. Wondered about the implications of leaving that night. Thought about me.
"I did," her lilting voice murmurs beside my ear.
I spin around.
The night is dark. Empty except for the looming walls of Archie's house, the dim glow of the humming streetlights, and a tree.
She's not there.
I glance down at the photo in my hand. Of smiling Betty, eyes glowing with life and hope and freedom. She did think of me. She picked up her phone, pulled up my number and sent those three words; I love you.
I gaze down at Betty in the picture. I breathe in her smile. My features wilt.
"I love you, too," I whisper into the air.
The air answers with the crack of a door opening.
I spin around, catching a glimpse of the Cooper's front door swinging open before I dive to the side of the house and out of sight.
Footsteps click along the porch, a steady, slow heartbeat of a rhythm. They sound like heels.
The footsteps stop. But the heartbeat doesn't. It's in my chest. Heaving nervously. I tell it to calm down.
For a moment, everything is silent. The porch light glimmers above a figure, casting a shadow behind it. I press my head back against the house wall. Just in case the figure turns around.
There's a brief rummaging in pockets. Then the click clicking of a lighter. A drag of a cigarette. A puff of smoke.
In any normal situation, this would be the time to leave. To disappear out of sight like Betty and never be discovered. But my intense curiosity tugs at me. Hisses at me that if I don't take advance of this, I'll never find out what happened to Betty. It comes in the form of my throbbing heart.
And so, I dare to move. To shift into the line of sight, curling around the side of the house, praying that the figure is facing away.
Alice stands on the porch of her house. Her straggly blonde hair billows out behind her, arms wrapped protectively around her ribs. Her nails are painted maroon red. Their chipped at the ends.
I duck back into the shadows. Just enough to stay hidden. To shade my face.
Alice rocks back on her heels, fidgeting with her fingers before she takes another drag of her cigarette. It's long and desperate. She's shaking.
There's a sharp curse under her breath. I can't tell if she's swearing at the world or at herself.
I would gladly swear with her.
Or talk to her. Or approach her.
I could. I could catch her off guard, ask her about Betty, try and get some answers.
Kevin's voice haunts me in my head, warning me it would just make her tense up. She would throw a guard up, tell me nothing. She doesn't trust me. She never has.
But this isn't about me. It isn't about her.
It's about Betty. Everything is about Betty. She is the reason I'm here.
I curse all sanity under my breath before I straighten myself up and ready myself to lunge into the light.
Until Alice turns around. She's gaunt. Her skin is pale, sunken into her skull. Her eyes are faded, her cheeks sucked in and shaded with grief.
I stumble back before she sees me.
She clicks her heels back across the porch, the front door scraping open. But before she strides back in, she flicks her cigarette into the air. In lands an inch from my feet.
The glow of the embers cut into the dark grass. It burns slow, the tobacco shrivelling as it's eaten up. I watch it transfixed.
I can't speak to her. Not yet. She's not ready.
Kevin's right.
And so, while the cigarette is still alight, I turn on my heel, collect my bag and stride back into the night.
"Why didn't you show me this?" Kevin flicks his head back towards his father in shock. Betty in the CCTV footage walks into POP's and finds herself a seat in a secluded booth. She smiles at Pop as he approaches, assuming to take her order, but she simply shakes her head.
As he walks away, she dips her head down, glancing at her phone. After a few minutes, she stares out of the window, flicking her gaze from window to door to window.
It's as if she's waiting for someone.
Kevin has watched this footage about three times. He knows that no one will come. She'll leave without buying anything or meeting anyone.
It's eerie seeing the past like this. Black and white, void of sound. It's as if he's intruding on her memories.
"Because you're not her family," Sheriff Keller says sharply from behind his son. The words sting. He's right. Kevin isn't her family. He neglected her too often to be considered even her friend. "I'm not obliged to show you anything."
Kevin smiles grimly. Fair enough.
"But," the Sheriff intercedes, raising his thick, grey eyebrows, "Because you were interrogating Pop – which you shouldn't have been, by the way. That man has been through enough – I figured you deserved to see it." The Sheriff pauses. "You were her friend after all."
No. Guilt grips him. It grabs his throat and squeezes. That's wrong. He wasn't a friend to her at all.
But instead of voicing the truth, Kevin, feeling a surge of realistic hope, simply states; "Am her friend."
A single curl unfurls from his hair and falls over his face.
The trailer door creaks open with an eerie echo. Wincing, I reluctantly step into what is currently my home and close the door with a slam. The whole trailer seems to shudder.
Clicking the lock – and sure that it won't hold – I immediately yank off my coat and throwing over the first clean surface in sight. Well, relatively clean.
I yank up my sweater, the sodden material sticking to my skin as I try to pull it off. I need a shower. My skin feels cold and clammy. My chilly fingers zip down the fly on my jeans.
I move to tug them down when I stop.
I spot the pockets.
I swear sharply, sinking my hand into the pocket and pulling out the soaked poster.
"No, no, no, no," my throat lets out a low growl of frustration. I hurry to the nearby table, flicking on the nearest light and spread out the paper. The Andrews Construction Poster has completely bled through into Betty's Missing poster. I curse Fred for designing his logo with the colour red.
Throwing it aside in disgust, I reach for the missing poster. Red ink bleeds into the white page, black text from the underside of the poster showing through. Hissing at the rain and my cursed jeans – and stupidity for keeping it there in the first place – I delicately pry open the poster, careful not to rip it's weakened folds. I swear at myself for folding it in the first place.
I let out a breath of relief as I manage to flatten out the page.
The black text is smudged. The red ink blotch looks like blood.
Betty smiles out at me behind it. She looks harrowingly familiar.
"Wait a second," I gasp, spinning around frantically, diving for my bag. I haven't even noticed how cold I am without a shirt on.
Zipping open the back sharply, I quickly pluck out Archie's photograph – the one of Betty, the one with the cypher on the back. I hurry back to the table and hold it out next to the poster.
My breath shudders.
It's the exact same photograph.
Switches begin to click in my head. Like a machine turned back to life.
If Archie received this photograph in the mail a week ago – is there another copy out there? One that was here before Betty disappeared?
Or was this photograph, the one I grip in my hands, the original picture used to print the posters?
My fingers feel ghostly as I hold it. And wonder how many other hands have held it too.
