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As the holiday season approached, every day Jughead began to feel more and more like Sisyphus—pushing a rock up a hill only to have it fall down and have to start all over again. Betty wasn't speaking to him, which was for the best, he told himself again and again, but her absence was a hole in his heart that the cold wind whistled through. And his father blamed him, rightly, for the situation with Penny Peabody, but refused to let Jughead help or even know what was going on. He felt like a child, who had made messes of all his favorite things and was being punished by being made to watch the messes get worse.

He couldn't help but notice the way Betty refused to look at him when they met, the dark circles under her eyes that said she wasn't doing any better than he was—but he ruined everyone he got close to, broke their heart. He couldn't hurt her any more than he already had. He refused to.

Betty woke up night after night in a cold sweat, dreaming of the Black Hood. Every dream ended the same, with her backing away as he came toward her, moving inexorably closer regardless of what obstacles stood between them.

She would lie awake the rest of the night trying to find solutions—to the mystery of the Black Hood, to Jughead's insistence that they were better apart despite the overwhelming evidence that all they were apart was miserable—and dawn would find her frustrated and sad and missing Jughead with every breath.

Kevin had gone forward with the idea of a Secret Santa exchange despite all the interpersonal drama between the rest of the group, and the exchange was as difficult as Betty had feared, with Jughead standing off to the side, keeping a clear space between himself and the others.

The only thing that saved it was Archie's thoughtful gift of a book from their childhood, and the return of Moose, home from the hospital.

But as everyone else was crowding around Moose to welcome him back, Archie took off. Betty hurried after him. "Why are you rushing off?"

"Look, Betty, I don't want to be that guy, but I see Moose, all I think about is the Black Hood and the pain he's caused to the people that I care about. Including you."

"I know." She tried not to think about the Black Hood, dressed as Santa, crawling across the furniture toward her. "And the fact that he's still out there is giving me anxiety nightmares, and making me paranoid." She glanced around, feeling that too-familiar tingle on the back of her neck. "It's like everywhere I look, all I see is—" Over Archie's shoulder, she saw something strange, and she marched past him, ignoring his questions, to the unfamiliar man mopping the floor. "Excuse me. Who are you?"

He stared at her. "You mean my name?"

She glanced at Archie and back at the janitor. "Uh, where's Mr. Svensson?"

The janitor shrugged. "No idea. It's been a few days; they just called me in." He pushed past her with his mop, leaving Betty completely spooked. What if that was him? It didn't feel like him, but how would she know?

She looked at Archie. "You and Veronica confronted Mr. Svensson about his connection to the Black Hood."

"And now he's not here."

"What if something happened to him?"

"Betty, we found out Mr. Svensson's secret. What if we led the Black Hood right to him? What if we got him killed?"

Another victim; just what Riverdale needed.

Jughead waited for Betty in the office of The Blue and Gold. With every minute that ticked past, he told himself this was a bad idea … but he missed her so much that he couldn't convince himself to leave without seeing her.

She came in eventually, giving him a suspicious look. Completely fair, since he had been the one to end things between them.

"Hey. I … stayed behind because—" He held out the package in his hand, gaily wrapped in paper he had chosen before ... everything. "Merry Christmas."

Betty took it from him, looking surprised but not angry, which was more than he had expected. "Thank you." She put the present down on the desk unopened, along with the gift from Archie that had made her smile so freely and openly that it had sent a pang of bitter jealousy shooting through Jughead.

"Look, I'm sorry," he said, "for how it all went down between us. The Serpents—my dad and I specifically—are in a precarious place. I—I just don't want you in those crosshairs."

"Well, that's not your decision to make, Jughead. Even if you think it's to protect me. It's my choice what I risk and for whom."

"I know," he whispered, wishing he could let her risk herself for him, wishing the thought of her being hurt didn't fill him with icy fear. Even if she was willing to take the risks, he couldn't bear to. Not her. Anyone else, but not her. "I should go check on my dad." He was almost to the door when she called his name.

"I got you something … too," she said softly, as if she was reluctant to admit it.

It was a big box, wrapped in the Cooper family's finest ornate style, and Jughead forced a smile as he accepted it. Whatever it was, it would be more than he deserved.

It had already been a long, odd day—the weird Secret Santa exchange, the awkwardness of exchanging gifts with Jughead and hearing him double down on the fear that had led him to end things between them, her visit with Archie to Mr. Svensson's house where they found no sign of him. The secretary said he'd called in sick, and that she'd dropped off some chicken soup to him. Betty wanted to accept that story, but something still felt so strange about Mr. Svensson's sudden absence.

Coming home, she dropped her things at the door, finding her mother doing the Christmas baking in the kitchen. "By the way," her mother said, "there was a gift for you on the steps. Your Secret Santa. I took it up to your room."

"Secret Santa?" Betty echoed. Archie had been her Secret Santa, so unless he'd found something else in his garage …

A small box tied with red ribbon lay on her night table. The card was typewritten, making her think, suddenly and painfully, of Jughead. But she had Jughead's gift, unopened, in her backpack. This wasn't from Jughead.

With trembling hands, she pulled the ribbon off the box.

Inside was a severed finger.

The Black Hood was back.

Archie, bless his heart, came right over to look at the finger, and the note, which claimed that the finger belonged to Mr. Svensson, otherwise known as Joseph Conway. The note challenged Betty to find the truth of a "final trespass" and reveal it to all of Riverdale.

"He kidnapped Mr. Svensson, Arch, and now he's mutilating him."

Before Archie could answer, her phone buzzed. A breathless voice came through, calling her name, but when she asked if that was Mr. Svensson, the Black Hood's familiar voice answered her. "It is, Betty. His name's Joseph Conway. He's lost a lot of blood. Though it's nothing compared to the blood on the hands of this town. Exhume the past. Find where the primal sin was committed, and you'll find the sinner Conway may be alive. And, as always, don't—"

Before he could finish, Archie snatched the phone from Betty's hand. "What, you maniac? Don't tell Sheriff Keller?"

The Black Hood hung up without speaking.

Betty took her phone back. "Archie, what sin? What could Mr. Svensson possibly be guilty of?"

"Veronica and I talked to him, Betty. His entire family was murdered by some crazy preacher."

"Well, maybe the people who adopted him know something that we don't."

"Wait. Betty, before he was adopted, Mr. Svensson lived as Joseph Conway at the Sisters of Quiet Mercy. Would they talk to us?"

"They'd better."

Jughead slammed his way out of the trailer, wanting nothing more than to hide himself away and cry. When his father had been released from prison, he'd thought that they finally had a chance at a real relationship—his dad could go straight, and Jughead could move ahead with his own life. But his foolishness in getting under the thumb of Penny Peabody had ruined all that. His dad was back with the Serpents, and, worse, was using them to run drugs for Penny. And he justifiably blamed Jughead, to the point where he had tried to kick him out of the trailer.

Jughead was left with nothing. No future; no father; no Betty; no way to fix the mess he had made.

Or was there?

He gathered the young Serpents together, laying out the situation, and the path the Serpents must inevitably go down if they let Penny continue to call the shots, a path none of them wanted to tread. He asked them to come with him to take out Penny, once and for all.

There was silence, and then Toni, bless her, stood up, her voice strong and clear. "What is the first law?"

"No Serpent stands alone," Sweetpea said reluctantly. He stood up. "I'm in."

"Me, too," Toni said.

The rest of the crew joined in, one by one. Now, if only the plan would work.

They hauled Penny safely over to Greendale, where Jughead hoped she would stay, and he did what he had intended to do—he removed the Serpent tattoo from her arm. It was the first time he had ever done violence to another human being, and it made him sick to feel her skin under his knife. But it had to be done, for his father. As long as Penny was a Serpent, FP Jones would never be free. Once she had been removed … his father could start a new life.

It was the only way, Jughead told himself firmly, steeling his heart and hand against Penny's shrieks of pain.

Betty's quest for the truth led her first to the Sisters of Quiet Mercy, where she unhesitatingly blackmailed them for the information she needed, and then to Nana Rose Blossom, who told Betty and Archie all about the night a group of vigilantes buried a man alive, thinking he was the killer of the Conway family. A group of vigilantes that included Betty's grandfather.

In her car, she tried to calm down, tried not to feel that somehow she was tainted by what her grandfather had done. "Archie, my grandfather helped murder an innocent man."

"Betty, who even knows if what she was saying is true?"

"That picture Nana Rose mentioned? When Grandpa Lewis died, we packed up his house. And we donated most of his stuff. But he had pictures, and we kept them and we organized them and—"

"Okay, Betty, take a breath. Where are they? Where are the pictures?"

"My house. They're at my house."

"That's great."

He didn't seem to understand the full implications of the situation. "Archie, my grandfather killed a man in cold blood. An innocent man. What if that's why he picked me? The Black Hood. That's why he's been calling me, revenge for something I didn't even do—" Underneath it all was her terrible fear that the kind of blackness it took to kill an innocent man lurked inside her, had always been there. Archie could never understand that. Archie's anger was all fire, over in a flash. He could do violence, but he would always regret it later. He would never know what it was like to feel that there was something in you that could do … unspeakable things and never look back, if you would only let it out.

Archie grasped her hands to stop the flow of her words. "Listen to me." He held her gaze firmly. Her brave and pure Archie. "This is the part where we end this. Where we save Mr. Svensson and stop the Black Hood. Tonight, Betty. I need you with me. I can't do this alone. Tomorrow we're going to wake up and everything is going to go back to how it was, but right now, I need you with me. I need Betty Cooper."

"Arch," she whispered. And she leaned in to kiss him because she needed him, too. She needed to know that someone as pure as Archie could stand to be touched by her, that he was there for her and he wasn't going to run away.

The kiss ended and she drew away.

"Betty," Archie said, but she didn't want to wait to know what he was thinking. That had been enough.

"We have to hurry up."