The Epilogue

Edward Lodge was a fighter, there was no doubt about that.

Everyone had seen it beforehand, when he wrestled or when he got into fights with Clayton or Reggie.

But Cheryl knew that Edward knew when to pick his fights, and when Edward had thrown the plate at her father in an attempt to escape the estate was the same time she realised she needed to run away too. She knew that her mother and grandmother had managed to survive the murderous encounter with her own father. She still could barely understand what had happened that entire morning, it had still not fully impacted her.

Her own father, had murdered his first son. Her own brother, murdered in cold blood for a reason still unknown to her. She had always thought family was worth more than any amount of money, but clearly she was wrong.

That thought had died when she watched her father stalking towards her, gun in hand. When she was cradling a dying Edward in the orchard, warm blood in the snow, coating her hands.

That was a true hell.

What had confounded her even more was how hard Edward was fighting, how he had taken three gunshots that had critically impacted his own body in an attempt to shield her from harm. Perhaps, maybe before the past few days' events, she would have doubted his convictions and principles when it came to being friendly with others in school. Hell, she still doubted his own feelings towards her. Over years, everyone could have seen how much he hounded after Betty Cooper, as a friend and as a lover. He was like a lost puppy, and then there was the issue of him being the ultimate womaniser like many of the jocks inside the school. He got around, he was like a bloody disease and it scared her.

For a few weeks, he had been utterly devoted to Betty when they came back from the summer break.

Now, he had dropped her in order to 'support the Blossom family' which was total bullshit. Cheryl Blossom was not stupid, she had a 4.0 grade-point-average. She also wasn't blind or deaf to what people said or did, to her or otherwise. She knew, from the people in her clique that Edward had always taken a shine to her fine self, she had seen it in his eyes when he had first laid eyes on her in their junior year.

They just had more of a friendly rivalry thing before now.

There was a fine line between having a friendly rivalry, compared to having a totally different relationship which had already been consummated in secret.

She hated herself, she hated how she had let herself become so taken in by such a boy. Now? She had placed her heart in this admittedly-handsome wean, and he was dangerous and it scared her more than she care to admit.

So she was sat in the hospital, waiting outside the private room that had already been sectioned off for use for Edward when he came out of the surgery. She didn't know what to do, other than pace around in an attempt to find some measure of control over herself, over her own life. That was something she always valued in her life, the amount of self-control she had over herself, or how she always had a calm place in the storm when she had Jason. Now, ever since that fateful day where she had lost the one person who she knew truly cared for her, she had no safe place. She was in a raging ocean, and she had no dock to go to.

It was killing her inside, how she could only rely on herself; only blame herself for any future mistakes. She needed to be responsible, she needed to become the adult that her parents never taught her how to be. If anything they taught her how to be a businesswoman amongst anything else. She was sixteen for Christ's sake! What the hell was she meant to do in a situation like this, how was she meant to keep herself in check?

"Damn you..." Cheryl muttered to nobody in particular, other than herself. "Damn you, Dad. You…. Asshole."

There was a mild humming from the lights, a slight thrumming coming from above that had started to vibrate inside her own head. The drab greys and whites that flooded her eyes with cleanliness and hygiene, it was a contrast to her own home, the darkness of the mahogany wood furniture that was littered throughout the manor, the black and red walls that had scores of expensive paintings hanged upon the walls. At any other time, she would have rather been brooding at Thorn Hill than inside some godforsaken hospital performing insincere well-wishing. Yet, since she had lost Jason she had finally knew what it was like to be mortal.

She was helpless, and it hurt.

X-X-X

She was helpless, and it hurt.

As soon as Jughead had hitched a ride all the way into the North Side of Riverdale and told them about what he had found in his father's trailer. She had watched the video, she had seen what horror she had never expected but had always had an inkling of what to expect. It never seemed like a regular gangland killing, if Riverdale could have even been considered 'gangland'. They had the Serpents and the Ghoulies on the South Side, but it was always just pot and grease-monkeying.

She wasn't stupid, but she definitely was not crazy enough to experiment with what they were. The closest she had ever gotten towards that kind of stuff was with Jughead and Edward, both of them being related to somebody who was actively involved in a gang or who had been arrested for a crime that required an immense amount of manpower and coordination. A smuggling ring, that just screamed 'organised crime' to her.

Now, she was about to lose the one boy who had always been by her side.

She could remember the day when he had arrived at their school, back when all of the boys and the girls were all too afraid of each other to even go near each other. There was always the joke that Betty could never have been real, she was always too kind. It sort of worried her, that as kids they were always too suspicious of her because that she was just too kind, too normal. Perhaps they were right, maybe she was indeed compensating for some issues that she was still facing.

There was that side of her, the side of her that scared her more than anything else. It brought out traits that she deep down, she knew she liked, deep down she might very well have been an exhibitionist. Hopefully she would either grow out of it, or perhaps just come to live with it. Edward, he had always been the one young man who always seen her as Betty and not some trophy to be won by the other boys. In spite of that, she had fallen for him because he wanted her and she wanted him, and grappled with each other's own issues.

She had been the first to run to the Sheriff, to almost throw the USB stick at the Sheriff and barely screamed at him to get to Thorn Hill to arrest Clifford Blossom and to save Cheryl, to save her boyfriend from extreme danger. She had been the first person to jump into a car when she heard the report, that a young man had been fatally shot three times when attempting to save a young girl from a maddened murderer.

She knew, despite his own self-loathing, that Edward was a good person in his heart.

She had gotten out of the Mercedes, which had held Julian Lodge, Archie and Jughead and made a dash to the entrance to the hospital. It was a quiet day, which under any other circumstances Betty would have considered a good thing but that day turned it into a nightmare. She had no doubt that the four of them looked like a real state, and she had even tried to message Veronica in a flurry that made her own magnanimous spelling turn into a mess, and she had yet to even get a reply from her.

She had stopped speaking to them recently, it was mainly since Jughead's birthday since she was not invited that she felt rather thrown out of the group. That was nobody's fault, Jughead never truly appreciated large gatherings and he wanted a cinema double-viewing with herself and Archie. It was perfection, the best an event like that could have been, even if Edward could not have made it but it didn't matter.

It was an impeccable event between friends. It just riled Betty up even more that Veronica could not have even responded when it came to the health and safety of her own cousin, adopted or not.

She had gone to the receptionist's desk, alongside Julian and soon they were treading down the halls in order to find whatever room Edward was either going to be lying in awake, asleep or not in at all. She just wanted to see Edward, and obviously she would have given the father and son their private time for whatever discussions they were doomed to have. She would love to be a fly on the wall in that conversation, but she was too well-mannered to do that.

As soon as she turned to the Intensive Care private rooms, she had caught sight of the bright red hair waiting outside of the room, a loud clapping of boots echoing through the hall coming from both the group as well as the Blossom heiress as soon as they caught sight of each other. The three boys and the girl immediately checked the room, but immediately after Betty had taken Cheryl in her arms and given her the tightest hug she could have given.

"Cheryl, my god, are you okay? We tried to get you but we could never reach you, please tell me you're okay?" Betty rushed through her words, making sure her hands never left the red-headed girl. "Cheryl?"

"I… I can't even begin to speak about what's happened at home or what happened at all. I just… all I can say is that I owe Edward everything right now. Anything and everything."

Betty could see the black-tinted tracks of water dribbling down the pale, rose-red cheeks of the rich girl. She was clearly traumatised and not a single doctor was in sight, probably because she was too stubborn to admit herself to help when somebody had basically gone and performed the ultimate sacrifice for her. No wonder she looked like she was in such a state, she looked as if she had refused any help that was given her.

"Where's Eddie? Where's my son?" Julian asked, to nobody as nobody decided to respond. The teens were silent, they didn't know the answer. He looked to the nearby nurses. "Where is my son? Where is he?!"

The two ladies quickly ran off in order to find the correct charts for the future resident of that specific room. The grieving father was clearly worried, angry at the fact that he did not know where his possibly-dying son was. It was completely understandable, and Archie and Jughead were completely silent. They were coping in their own way, knowing that to themselves they could possibly be losing on their best friends in the next few hours.

X-X-X

Imagine this very instant, frozen forever in time.

People, men and women, will look at this moment as the exact point in time where the last bit of Riverdale's innocence had truly died.

When darkness and evil had finally won.

Marked by an act of violence, of sin and depravity, of perversion and malevolence, that marked the true end of the little town of Riverdale.

X-X-X

I can't really describe how much this story has taken it out of me.

I have tried to write a Riverdale fanfiction before, and I had to delete it mainly due to my own lack of happiness in it's quality and premise. This, I thought, had gotten past those issues and to this day I still think I believe that I have very much succeeded in getting past the roadblocks that made me delete the original story. I look at the original chapters in this story and I think 'yeah, I could do a little better but I am definitely happy with this' and I was happy with it. I never thought I would write a sequel (it's not my forte) but I had enough inspiration to finish this.

The high point was around when I started watching the start of Season 3. A cult-like horror themed season that harkens back to the quality of Season 1, that was a good set-up for a good season.

That didn't last long, and neither did my inspiration. This season, without a doubt, has been the worst season of Riverdale I have ever watched. It's caused me to leave the story, to consider getting rid of it but that is just how it is. I am happy this is finished. I can finally wipe my hands of this fucking shambles of a franchise that had such a good origins.

Roberto Aguire-Sacasa can actually get in a bin, for how awful his creative decision-making has been when it's come to the show. Shame on him, for ruining such a promising adaptation.

Credit goes to HPMarvel and Boris Yeltsin for constant reviews and upkeep on this story, reminding me that I needed to finish this for everyone who had favourited and followed the story. You kept me going.

-Skrumpf-