A/N: Hey I know this is really short chapter but I've been feeling guilty about not updating so consider it something to tide you over. I've basically been working 12 hours a day (which is all writing) and then doing schoolwork on top of that so it's really tough to sit down and write fic at the end of the day. I'm sorry guys. I'm really trying.
Betty.
Betty knows about bad habits. Everyone has at least one. Her mother with her lying, her father with his drinking, Jughead with his smoking. Veronica's scheming and Kevin's gossiping.
Even perfect Betty Cooper has bad habits. Hers used to be Archie, but the more time passes the less she feels that familiar tug toward the redhead. She'll always feel something for him, there's too much history there for it to go away completely, but it's different now.
Everything is different now.
She stares out at the rushing water, the ice of it seeping through the toes of her runners. She should move.
She should stop coming here.
She should she should she should.
But she won't. She's done doing what she should. She's done being the perfect girl next door, the obedient daughter, the pining best friend.
The problem is that she has no idea who she's going to be now.
She doesn't realize she's waded in until the frigid water soaks the hem of her shorts. It hits her thighs and startles her out of her thoughts with a pained gasp. The water pushes and tugs around her legs, deep enough to threaten the tentative grip her running shoes have on the rocky bottom.
For a second, she thinks she's going to fall.
Then her feet dig into the sand and rocks, the lurching movement of her waist spraying freezing water across her front. Her breath, stolen for a moment, comes back to her in a punch.
That was close. Too close. She can't afford to have these moments anymore. Her father used to joke that Betty had her head in the clouds, but this…she's not a kid anymore. She needs to get all this under control.
Everything is different now.
They send Polly away.
Betty will never, ever admit that it is the worst day of her life. The thought is selfish and childish and repeats like a drumbeat in her head as Jughead distracts the Sisters while she sneaks her own sister out of the building and into the truck he borrowed from Fred. Not that Fred knows what he needed it for.
They put Polly on a bus. Polly, whose hair no longer matches Betty's, now cropped short and black in a way that reminds Betty uncomfortably of a wig she herself once wore. They wave goodbye, and as they stand there, in the now empty bus depot, her hand finds another all on it's own.
His fingers lace between hers, squeezing, and it takes everything, everything in her not to fall apart right then and there. Her other hand curls into a fist at her side.
"I'm sorry," Jughead says, and she knows he means it. He doesn't often do sincere, but it suits him surprisingly well, and her heart constricts in her chest as she looks over and meets his eyes. Grey and so, so clear today.
"You shouldn't be sorry," she manages, voice rough. "You saved them." Above them, the sky has turned red. It's just sunset, she knows, but god it feels ominous. It feels like a sign.
She can't help thinking of what the colour means in this town. Who owns it. Whether her niece or nephew will be born crowned with it.
"I wish it didn't have to be like this," he says, so quietly that for a moment she thinks she's misheard him. He never wishes for anything. It's one of the things she finds so heartbreaking and admirable about him.
"I don't want to go home," she says. She can't-can't be there after this, having to see her parents and knowing that they did this, they built a home that was all brick and shadows and Polly is gone because of them.
"Betty-"
She can feel his eyes on her again, looks away so he won't see the tears pooling at her lashes.
"Please, Jughead."
He sighs.
"Okay. Come on."
They jump back in the truck, it's old enough to have one of those bench seats, and she almost doesn't notice when he throws one arm up behind her shoulders.
Almost.
They pull into the Andrews' driveway, and he shuts the truck off. It suits him more than he'd like, she's sure, the whole old truck one hand on the steering wheel thing.
He turns to look at here.
"Do you want to stay here tonight? I'm sure Fred wouldn't mind."
She bites her lip. She shouldn't.
Her thoughts from earlier come back to her.
She's done doing what she should.
"Okay," she says softly. He reaches out, tugging gently on her ponytail. She only wears her hair up when she runs now, but she'd been too distracted this morning to do anything else with it. She gives him a weak smile.
"I-" Love you. The words are right there, on the tip of her tongue, and she physically clamps her mouth shut to catch them. She what? She does not love Jughead.
The idea is ridiculous.
It's pathetic.
The first guy to be nice to her, the one who picked up the slack where Archie left off and she just-
She falls for him.
Struggling to find anything else to say, something to distract him from what she almost said, Betty blurts the next thing that comes to her mind.
"I'm sorry."
He blinks at her.
"For…" He says slowly, brows drawing together in confusion.
"If this is what it was like for you," she clarifies, the words surprising her almost as much as him. She hadn't realized she'd been thinking it all day, just under her own pain. "When your mom…just not having your family there. I'm sorry if this is what it's like."
He stares, every plane of his face sharpening in understanding.
When grief flashes behind his eyes she wishes she'd never brought it up.
"I didn't mean-"
"No," he says, and his voice is rough and it reminds her of the way he sounds first thing in the morning. The memory flares something hot and completely inappropriate in her stomach. "I know. Thanks. I'm, uh, I'm sorry too."
She sighs.
"We're a sorry pair, I guess."
His lips twitch, some of the darkness in his eyes ebbing away.
"Well, at least we have each other," he murmurs, and she's sure it's a joke but he doesn't know that that fact is the only thing keeping her standing these days.
"Yeah." When her eyes flit upwards as she replies, it feels a little too much like a prayer. "At least we have each other."
Jughead.
I'm sorry if this is what it was like.
He can't stop replaying her words over in his head. He's always hated it when people feel sorry for him. It's one of the reasons he's always isolated himself from the others. He was tired of the pity, whether it was due to his father's recent antics or his mother's failures or that one time Tony gave him a black eye.
But this was different.
Why was this different? Because it's Betty? Because he's in love with her?
Or because he suspects she might be the only one who actually knows him? The only one who gets it. Archie thinks he understands, compares his situation with Mary to Jughead's. But it's not the same. He has Fred, has always had Fred. FP is…he's been there for Jughead only enough that the occasions can be counted on one hand. And even then…his best efforts fell flat. That's their always. FP will always let Jughead down.
He rolls over on the couch.
He'd offered Betty his bed, since he was the one to invite her. Archie put up a valiant argument, but in the end, Jughead is used to sleeping on couches. He's used to sleeping in far less comfortable places than couches.
He falls asleep surprisingly quickly, and dreams of blonde hair and rushing water and someone calling his name.