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Toni came to Jughead's trailer that night, her face tense and worried.

"What's up?"

She was twisting her hands in the way Betty did sometimes. "Jughead, I, um … I came to warn you, I guess. If you're having any second thoughts, now would be the time to back out. Because the final trial … is on a whole other level."

"The Gauntlet, you mean?" He smiled, trying to make light of it, but seeing Toni look afraid made it hard to do. He gestured to Hot Dog, taking comfort in the dog's relative normalcy. "If it's anything like The Beast, I think I'll be fine. Whatever."

"No, Jughead, it's not whatever! You join us, you gotta be willing to die for us." She came toward him, and he could see in her face that she meant it, literally. "Because we will for you. And your North Side friends, your girlfriend … You're gonna look up one day and they're all gonna be gone. Because that's what happens when you join a gang. The Serpents are no exception."

He felt the truth of what she was saying, felt Archie … Betty … slipping through his fingers already, flowing away from him like ice in a river. He wanted to argue with Toni, to tell her it wasn't true, but he couldn't. "Consider me warned. Thank you, Toni."

She moved past him, letting herself out with another word, leaving Jughead to wrestle with the decision. Or pretend he was. He had made the decision when he moved into this trailer, symbolically taking his dad's place. This was his home, these were his people. He would take the consequences.

Betty sat on a bench, under a light, alone in the dark. Truly alone, the way the Black Hood wanted. She could feel the rawness of her skin where he had peeled her open, layer by layer. The cipher … her speech … the picture of her mother exposing her as a former Serpent and cutting Betty off from her parents … now Veronica. The words she had hurled at her best friend still stung as if she had struck herself with them. She could only imagine how angry and hurt Veronica must be.

And now here she was. Waiting.

The cheery strains of "Lollipop" broke into the silence of the night. Betty didn't want to answer; she didn't want to go another step down this dark road with this unknown person who assured her that she knew the face under the hood. But she had to. Not just to save the next life, or the one after that—but because the Black Hood was right. There was something in her that knew him, that recognized him. The darkness in him called to the darkness in her.

Fighting back the tears, she answered the call. "I did it," she told him. "And now I want my question. What will make you stop?"

"You," he answered without hesitation. "As long as you continue showing me your devotion."

"I can't keep doing this."

"Sure you can. Jughead. The son of the Serpent."

Betty closed her eyes. Not Jughead. Anyone else, but not him. She needed him; he anchored her, kept her safe, kept the darkness inside her where it belonged. "No!"

"He's unworthy of your love. Cut him out of your life," the voice said, hard and insistent. "Or I will."

He would do it; she knew he would do it. But how could she do as he asked?

Archie found her in the office of The Blue and Gold the next day, all filled with righteous indignation. Veronica's white knight. You had to admire how he never quit.

"What the hell was that last night? Betty?"

As the tears that hadn't stopped since last night's phone call continued to roll down her cheeks, Betty said, with a calm she was far from feeling, "I lied to you. When you asked me if the Black Hood called again. He did. And he told me to cut Veronica out of my life or he—" She broke off, unable to finish the sentence, but Archie understood. "And now he wants me to do the same with Jug."

"Betty, why didn't you tell me?"

"Because I knew you'd try to talk me out of it!"

He stared at her for a moment, then, unexpectedly, he said, "You're right. That's my mistake." He turned to go, pulling his phone out of his pocket and starting to type on it.

Betty got up from her chair, hurrying to catch him before he reached the door. "Archie, put the phone down. Put the phone down!" She caught his hand before he could send whatever he'd been typing. "Listen to me. He hasn't attacked or killed anyone since we started talking. I think this is distracting him."

"Betty, he's torturing you! Making you hurt your mom, Veronica, and now Jughead? How are you going to put him and yourself through that?"

She couldn't deny that—it would be like tearing out her own heart to tell Jughead she couldn't see him anymore. "I was hoping maybe you would do it," she admitted in a small voice.

"What?"

"Maybe you could tell him that we just need to stay away from each other … for a while?" Fresh tears were forming even as she spoke, at the idea. Her head ached from the crying, her eyes burned. "Tell him something, anything, to just keep him away, to appease the Black Hood."

Archie sighed, understanding what he heard and not liking it. "Betty."

"It doesn't have to be cruel, Arch. Just enough to make Jug believe it."

He put a hand over his eyes, hating this. He loved Jughead as much as she did, and didn't want to see him hurt.

"We can walk it back later," she promised.

"You mean, you hope we can."

"No!" She had to believe it wouldn't be permanent. She had to have something left to hope for, to hold on to. "We can. And we will. Please, Arch. Don't quit on me now."

At last he gave a very small nod and Betty took a deep breath. "Thank you."

Coming out of his trailer, Jughead was startled to see Archie there. Possibly the last person he had expected to see show up at his door at sunrise. "Archie?"

"We've gotta talk, Jug."

All he could think of was getting his friend out of here before anyone saw him. "Uh … now's really not a good time. Okay? You need to leave. Okay? You gotta go. I'm serious."

"What's going on?"

And of course, that's when Sweetpea and the boys showed up. Right on cue. "What the hell do we have here?"

"He's leaving, all right?" Jughead put himself between Archie and the Serpents.

"Wait, you're friends with these thugs?" Archie demanded, and Jughead's heart sank. Dudley Do-right only ever saw the world as black and white, and Jughead's life was pretty much all in grey these days.

"It's not what you think," Jughead told him, trying to straddle a very fine line where the two groups didn't fight and he still belonged with both of them at the end of it.

"Are you joining the Serpents?"

Okay, so it was what he thought.

"If he survives," Sweetpea said. "And go ahead and call us thugs one more time." He lunged, and Jughead stopped him with an outflung hand.

But on his other side, Archie was arguing, "Jughead, these are the guys who attacked me. Who attacked Reggie and Veronica and Dilton. Your friends."

"Wait, is that why you're here? To warn me?"

"No. I came here to tell you to stay away from Betty. She doesn't want to see you anymore."

Jughead was surprised to find himself still standing, because those words, coming from Archie, on behalf of Betty, felt like they had just killed him. But no—he and Betty had been fine yesterday. This couldn't be right. "Screw you. I just saw Betty yesterday, sh—" But there had been something off, something he couldn't put a finger on. "She was fine."

"No, dude. She's been wanting to break up with you for weeks. She's been agonizing over it. Since you crossed to the dark side, she couldn't bring herself to do it."

Everything in Jughead was saying no, that this wasn't the way. That Betty would never send Archie, of all people, to do this. She would tell him herself. "So she sent you? Betty would never do that!"

"If you don't believe me, then call her. And feel free to tell her you're a Serpent now, too. I bet she'll love that. She saw where you were headed, Jughead. Okay? We all did. And she knows you can't be with them and with her. And come on, man. You know it, too."

Something wasn't right here. Something was off. Or maybe he was the one who was off, and he had never belonged. Maybe he had been fooling himself when he thought she knew him, thought she understood and loved him for everything he was. The pain was beyond anything he had ever felt before, and he fought to maintain control. Later, when he was alone, then he could let himself feel it, but for now he had to be cool. Cold. Icy. "Tell Betty I got the message," he snapped.

Archie, his best friend for his whole life, stared at him as though they didn't know each other. "Yeah." And he was gone, pushing his way through the Serpents, who let him go, because they had just gotten what they wanted. Jughead was theirs now … because he had no one else.

"What?" he asked them. "Did you enjoy the show?"

"The show hasn't even started yet," Sweetpea told him.

That night, Jughead faced the Gauntlet. It hurt, blow after blow as he staggered forward, knowing he must stay on his feet. But it didn't hurt half as much as losing Betty and Archie. At last he stood in front of Sweetpea, swaying but still standing, and asked, "Is that all you got?"

And as he had hoped, it wasn't. He barely even felt the brass knuckles strike his face as he faded into the sweet darkness of oblivion.

And then he fought through it, back to consciousness, because if he couldn't have the people he loved, he was damned sure going to have this. He got to his feet and took Sweetpea's outstretched hand. He was a Serpent.

Betty huddled on her windowseat, missing Veronica, missing Jughead like a part of her had been cut out. How much more of this could she take? What else could the Black Hood take from her? What did she have left?

When the sickening notes of "Lollipop" split the air, she wasn't surprised. She didn't speak as she lifted the phone to her ear.

"Is it done?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Ask me your question."

"There's only one I care about now."

"You want to know who I am. Well … There's an abandoned house on the edge of Fox Forest at the end of the service road. You'll find your answer there."

She put the phone down and stared at it. Could it really be that easy? Could this be all there was to it?

In a deserted house at the end of an overgrown driveway far from anywhere, Betty jumped at the sound of the bright ringtone. "Lollipop, lollipop, oh, lolly, lolly, lolly." Swiping to answer, she lifted the phone to her ear. "I'm here."

The now-familiar deep voice of the Black Hood came through the speaker. "Do you see it?"

She shone her flashlight around and saw, in the midst of the debris in the otherwise empty house, a package wrapped with a blood-red bow.

"It's the answer to your question," the Black Hood told her.

Crouching in front of the box, she undid the ribbon. Inside … was a black hood.

"Put it on," he said.

"Why?"

"Put it on and you'll see."

So she did, sliding the hood over her hair. "It's on," she told the Black Hood. She could barely breathe through the tears she was trying to hold back.

"Now turn around."

Slowly, she pivoted, finding herself facing a mirror. Nearly light-headed with fear and something else she couldn't quite put her finger on, she asked, "Why are you doing this to me?"

"To show you that we're the same."

No. No, they weren't. She wasn't playing his game, not for another minute. Ripping the hood off her head, she ran out of the house and across the overgrown lawn, back to safety.