Author's Note: I promised you a five-chapter story, and so I am delivering a five-chapter story... but I must admit that this last chapter is a doozy! I found myself with so many conversations and situations that I still wanted to include, I ran WAAAY overboard. This could easily have been two, or even three chapters, rather than one... so we'll just call it a holiday super-special, and not worry too much about it, okay? Very best to all!

Chapter 5

At some point in the night, the snow had stopped (neither of them had noticed until sunrise), and someone had ploughed Pops' parking lot… pushing all of the snow up against the side of the diner… leaving Betty's little hybrid an island in the middle of a massive snowbank. The car wasn't actually buried; she could wade to it and access the trunk, if she really tried. But it was surrounded on every side; the doors couldn't possibly be opened. It would take hours to dig it out.

They both stared at it in disbelief for a few seconds when they stepped outside after paying for the multiple infusions of food and beverages they'd received since the previous evening. And then they'd both started to laugh.

"Can we go in your car?" Betty asked, when she caught her breath.

"It's Dad's truck," Jughead answered, nodding at his truck on the other side of the lot… beautifully cleared out. "We can take it, but would you mind driving?"

"Defeated by the storm?" Betty teased, quirking a brow at him in challenge.

Jughead felt not the slightest need to defend himself, though. He just shrugged and grinned lazily at her. "You were always a better driver than me," he said easily, "especially in the snow." And it'll let me stare at you while you're focused on the road, he added silently in his own mind.

"True," Betty agreed readily, and caught his keys when he tossed them to her, as if she'd known all along he was going to do that. Knowing her, she probably had. She'd always known him inside and out; always been able to anticipate his next move. She'd always been a step ahead, and he'd always loved her for it.

"Oh, I love this truck!" Betty actually bounced a little as she said it, her eyes bright, and he knew her enthusiasm was sincere. "I had no idea FP still had her!"

"Some things never change," Jughead answered as he walked around to the passenger's side and climbed in.

Betty slid into the driver's seat, adjusted the mirrors, and made sure he'd buckled up before she shifted into gear and pulled smoothly out onto the freshly cleared highway, heading towards the trailer park. "So why do you have the truck?" she asked him as they got underway.

Jughead rubbed awkwardly at the back of his neck. This was a story that wouldn't be particularly easy to explain… or at least, to explain in a way that didn't make him sound like an utter fool.

"Juggie?" she prompted, and he wondered if he was imagining the slight warning tone in her voice.

"I borrowed it a few months ago, when I was moving," he began in partial explanation. "I'd come to town for FP's arraignment – he'll be getting out New Year's Day – and took the truck back to Toledo to make the move easier. It wasn't like he'd be using it for a while." He glanced quickly at Betty to gauge her reaction, but she hadn't batted an eye. She knew FP's history, so it probably wasn't even a little bit surprising to her that he was spending yet another Christmas behind bars.

She was glancing at him sideways, though, from suspiciously narrowed eyes. "So what aren't you telling me?" she asked shrewdly.

He gazed back at her in his best imitation of wide-eyed innocence… a non-verbal who me?, but Betty wasn't fooled.

"There's more to this story, Jughead Jones, and we both know it so you might as well just spill. What you could possibly be holding back about borrowing your Dad's truck so you could move, I don't know. It seems like a pretty straightforward, common-sense transaction. But I know you, and you are definitely not telling me something."

Jughead sighed. He could try to hold out, but it would be utterly futile. Betty had proven again and again over the past many hours that she hadn't lost an ounce of her lifelong ability to see right through him... and he'd proven just as comprehensively that hadn't gained even a smidgen of new skill at either dissembling or saying 'no' to her. "Well, I had to move out of the place I had with my… uh… well… my girlfriend, I guess…" he stammered and, for the first time in her entire life, he was sure, Betty took her eyes completely off the road while driving, as she turned to stare at him in slack-jawed amazement, mixed with some other emotion he couldn't quite name.

"This is a break-up story?" she asked, and her voice was pitched slightly higher than usual. "You were living with your girlfriend and you broke up and… you decided to drive to Riverdale to borrow a truck rather than renting one locally? This is definitely still lacking key elements of a cogent narrative, Jughead."

This was even more awkward than he'd anticipated, but there was no backing down at this stage. "Well… not exactly," he tried to explain. "We weren't… I hadn't really known…" he sighed and scrubbed a hand across his face miserably, heaving a deep breath before trying again. "We'd been out on a few dates, yes. We met through friends, she asked me out, we went out. She was really nice and fun and… you know, I liked her. But I only liked her. It was just… she was great but she wasn't…" She wasn't you, he longed to say, but didn't. "There was just nothing there," he concluded instead. "We didn't exactly talk about it, but I thought we were on the same page and after those first couple of dates we were just hanging out as, like, friends. So when she suggested getting an apartment, I thought she was suggesting we be roommates. And I figured, with a roommate, I could save some money, help Jelly out a bit if she ran short at university this fall…"

"You moved in with your girlfriend accidentally?" Betty sounded utterly incredulous and, honestly, he couldn't blame her.

"Kind of?" he asked more than answered, pinching the bridge of his nose as he realized how utterly foolish he still sounded… and deservedly so. "I think maybe it was more like I moved in with her on purpose, but she was my girlfriend accidentally, and it was all very confusing and awkward and…"

"How did you even figure out the issue?" Betty asked, sounding somewhere between fascinated and horrified now.

Jughead dropped his head, cringing all over again at the memory. "I showed up at the place she'd picked, with all my boxes and stuff, and umm… there was only one bedroom."

Betty shouted with laughter, which she quickly tried to stifle, glancing at him apologetically… although not apologetically enough, in his view.

"It's not funny," he muttered although right now, in this moment… it kinda was. "It was awful," he groaned, still tortured over the memory even as Betty's reaction was helping him, finally, to see how the whole thing could be kind of funny… to someone else. "I was so clueless. First, I asked where the other bedroom was, and when she looked at me like I was crazy and said there wasn't one, I was gaping at her going, 'well, how's this going to work?' And she thought I was being a weird idiot – not without some justification, I'll admit. And then when she realized I hadn't thought we were, like, together even though we'd been hanging out a couple times a week for months, she was angry and embarrassed and I was confused and embarrassed and it was just horrible and embarrassing and ugly, but we'd both already given up our old places, so we had nowhere else to go and…" he trailed off, groaning again and letting his head drop back against the seat behind him.

"I've honestly never been so happy to get a call about a court date for FP," he continued at last. "I'd been sleeping on the living room floor for a week by then, because she wouldn't let me sleep on the couch, she was so mad. I was trying to find a place I could afford while still paying my share of the rent at her place because I'd agreed to it even though only she had signed the lease and it wasn't really like she could get another roommate for a one-bedroom, and I couldn't just leave and stick her with it and… yeah. It was not a terrible time to go to Riverdale." With an effort, Jughead cut short his cavalcade of run-on sentences and took a deep breath before continuing. "And then while I was here, she sent me a text… an expletive-laden text, to be precise… saying that she'd found a roommate and the landlord was letting her transfer the lease to a two-bedroom unit, and I had to get my crap out by the weekend or she'd have it picked up by 1-800 Got Junk and charge it to me. So I took a bachelor apartment on a month-to-month lease, by phone, sight unseen, threw my bike in the back of FP's truck as soon as he'd been sentenced, and booked it back to Toledo."

Silence hung heavily in the truck for a few seconds… long enough for Jughead to wonder whether Betty was going to push him out at the next corner. And then…

"So… are you two still seeing each other?" she asked impishly.

And then they were both laughing – laughing until tears ran down their faces – as they drove through the wintery sunshine.

"We're both going to get arrested," Jughead grumbled, panting along in Betty's wake. She glanced over her shoulder to roll her eyes at him – wishing as she did that he didn't look so darned cute, struggling through the snow behind her – but didn't break her stride as she moved confidently along the southern edge of the Blossoms' property.

"Have we ever gotten arrested, Juggie?" she asked him rhetorically. They had not. If they had, her parents would doubtless have shipped her off to an all-girls boarding school in Switzerland before the day was out. "We must have gotten 10 or 12 Christmas trees in these woods over the years, even when the Blossoms were at home, and we have never once gotten arrested or even noticed. And now? Mr. and Mrs. Blossom are in Montenegro… probably hiding out after doing some much more nefarious things than taking one, teensy tree from the massive woods that they never even enter, except on the north end where the maples are. Jason is at my parents' house, I'm sure, looking down on all of my mother's arrangements, and I can only say they deserve each other. And Cheryl has never, in her entire life, voluntarily gone anywhere she couldn't go in heels."

"You really wanna bank on that?" he asked her, but she sensed that his resistance was mostly for show.

"No, what I really want is to get a Christmas tree and go decorate it… ideally with a little less whining and hand-wringing in the background," she told him with pretended seriousness, but she knew he wasn't fooled by her severity any more than she was fooled by his grumbling and complaints. This was their little ritual, the role-play they enacted as they tramped through the woods together, year after year. And it was good – it was glorious – to be doing it again after so long. It felt like home, like happiness. It felt like Christmas for the first time since she'd last invaded these woods as a teenager… with Jughead by her side.

She'd driven straight to the trailer from Pop's, but as soon as she'd walked in the door, she'd realized that she didn't just want to be at the trailer for a few minutes… she wanted to relive those happy childhood memories to the very fullest. She could pretty much guarantee her life was going to be a misery from the moment her mother finally got her into her clutches until she escaped Riverdale again; she might as well make the most of these last hours of freedom. So, she'd dragged Jughead back to the truck and headed back to the same spot they'd found all their Christmas trees over the years, the woods that concealed the Blossoms' ostentatious mansion from the eyes of lowly southsiders.

Jughead had been startled when she'd pulled a small hatchet from under the front seat of the pick-up truck, after parking in a spot that would be mostly invisible from both the road and the house.

"How did you know that was there?" he asked. "I didn't even know it was there, and I've been driving this truck for months!"

"I put it there," she'd shrugged, already starting to walk into the trees.

"What… why… when…" Jughead had spluttered, hurrying to follow her.

"Did you want to settle on one of those questions, or shall I just take a stab at answering all of them?" she'd teased. "FP broke down two or three years back while I was home. I happened to be the one who found him on the shoulder of the highway, and he didn't have anything useful in the truck at all. I had my tools on me, so I got him back on the road… but I also stocked the truck with an emergency kit before I headed back to the city. You know… first aid kit, basic tools, shovel, mylar blanket. And a hatchet, obviously." The way Jughead had been staring at her, his eyes huge and expressive of some emotion she couldn't quite name, had been unsettling her. So she'd picked up the pace and headed deeper into the woods… silent, until he'd begun their current exchange about risk of arrest.

She turned her head slightly to address another comment to Jughead, and there it was… exactly the tree they needed. "Juggie, look!" she breathed, half afraid she'd startle it out of existence if she spoke too loudly. "It's perfect." The white spruce was just behind and to the right of where she was standing, nestled between two, much larger trees. It wasn't much taller than she was, but perfectly proportioned. In the shadows of the woods, its needles looked almost blue, its branches small but sturdy enough to hold whatever ornaments they'd throw at it.

Jughead came and stood next to her, and a moment later she felt his arm, warm around her shoulders as he followed the direction of her gaze. He'd put his arm around her a million times before and, just like every time before, she lost her breath for a moment. She couldn't speak, couldn't move… could only lean into him and wish, with all her heart, that they could stand together like this, exactly like this, forever.

"This is the one, Jughead, don't you think?" she finally asked when the silence stretched a bit too long.

His arm tightened around her quickly, and his voice was a little gruff as he answered, "yeah. This is definitely the one."

Jughead wasn't a religious man, or even much of a philosopher. He'd never had any particularly clear ideas about an afterlife, or the lack of one, and that had never troubled him. At the moment, though, for the first time in his life, he knew for a certainty that he believed in Heaven… for the simple reason that he'd somehow found himself there.

The tree Betty had found was standing in front of the living room window. They'd carried it out of the woods together, more easily than should have been possible, even for such a small tree, and before they'd made it halfway back to the truck, Betty had been singing, her voice as rich and sweet and true as it had been so many years before. She'd sung "Oh Christmas Tree," of course, and then "Jingle Bells" and "Rudolph," and by the time they'd reached the truck, he'd added his own, tuneless growl to her voice as they raced through "The Twelve Days of Christmas," trying, as they always had, to make it through each verse on a single breath. His heart had swelled to bursting, not just with the memories of Christmases past, but with the unexpected pleasure of this Christmas, right here and now.

They'd passed Pop's on the way back to the trailer, and Betty had stopped in the parking lot and waded through snow past her hips to wrestle her belongings out of the trunk. "I don't want to risk the car getting buried completely before I can get back," she'd explained, looking slightly uncomfortable as she stowed her suitcase and her presents and assorted oddments behind the seat of the truck, and he'd managed to simply say it was fine rather than bellowing that it was PERFECT and she should stay with him forever. She'd parked behind the grocery store, too, and sent him inside ("I can't risk anyone telling my mom I'm in town already, Juggie!") armed with a list she'd texted to him, knowing there wouldn't be much of anything available at the trailer. He'd grabbed everything on the list in record time, added a few priority purchases of his own, and been back in the truck in time to hear her harmonizing with Bing Crosby's "White Christmas" on the radio.

And now the smells of popcorn and hot chocolate – real hot chocolate, made in a pan on the stove with milk and chocolate shavings – were wafting through the trailer, the tree was strung with multicoloured lights that he'd grabbed at the grocery store, and Betty was humming "Silver Bells" while she rummaged through his father's recycling bin to find material for ornaments. Heaven was real, it was right here in this crappy trailer, and he planned on staying for as long as he possibly could.

"Juggie," Betty paused in her humming to call to him, and he closed his eyes at the sweetness of the sound, "is your Dad's tackle box still in the hall closet?"

"I can check," he answered, given that he had only the vaguest notion of what a tackle box was, and none whatsoever of where his father kept it… assuming he still had one. Some random rummaging on both the floor and the shelf of the closet yielded a large-ish, metal box that could very well be a tackle box, so he dragged it out into the hall, calling, "is this what you're looking for, Betts?"

While he'd been half-buried in the closet, she'd moved from the kitchen to the living room, bringing two, massive bowls of popcorn and two, steaming mugs of hot chocolate. At his call, she looked up, smiling, from where she was arranging them on the scarred, Formica coffee table that had sat in front of the sagging couch for as long as Jughead could remember.

"Victory," she confirmed, and he tried to resist the urge to wriggle like a happy puppy under the warmth of her smile as he half carried, half dragged the box into the living room and plunked himself down beside her on the couch.

"I'm touched by your faith in my appetite," he told her, nodding towards the obscene quantities of popcorn that dominated the table.

"I learned years ago never to underestimate your appetite, Jughead," she confirmed. "As it happens, though, that bowl," she indicated the one in front of him "is hot, fresh, and buttered for eating. This one," she gestured to the bowl in front of her, "is plain, rapidly cooling, and destined for garlands for the tree."

Sure enough, while he began making inroads on the buttered popcorn and the best hot chocolate he'd ever tasted, she rummaged through the tackle box that probably hadn't been opened in at least 15 years and managed to come up with fishing line, and some wire to fashion makeshift needles, and set him to work stringing the plain popcorn into long strands. He was familiar with the process, so it went relatively quickly… despite his frequent pauses to consume more of the buttered and perfectly salted variety. Meanwhile, Betty herself, clad in a pair of heavy work gloves she'd unearthed from somewhere, was taking a pair of heavy shears or tin snips to an assortment of cans she'd found in the recycling bin that his father obviously hadn't taken out before his arrest, and that he himself had clearly forgotten in the rush to get back to Toledo before all his earthly possessions were jettisoned. Soda cans, she cut into spirals that hung like icicles from small loops of the fishing line, their coloured outsides and silver insides alternating when she stretched the spirals to hang more loosely. She cut the ends of food cans and carefully shaped them into stars. By the time he'd finished stringing the popcorn and had several long garlands to loop around the tree, she'd hung her sparkling ornaments all around, positioning them so they reflected and magnified the coloured lights he'd installed while she was working in the kitchen.

"It still needs something," Betty said in a considering tone, stepping back to look at the tree critically. He wanted to tell her that it didn't… that it was perfect… that she was perfect… but before he could squeeze even the slightest sound past the lump in his throat, she'd spun on her heel and started digging through the laundry basket of gifts she'd brought in from the truck. "Aha!" she crowed, coming up with a huge spool of soft, shiny red ribbon. "I was going to add this to the packages when I got to my parents' place, but it will look better here. And she was off again, humming softly to herself as she tied lengths of the ribbon into shimmering bows that she fastened to the branches here and there. Jughead left her to it, wordlessly clearing away the mugs and popcorn bowls and washing up the few dishes, working as quietly as possible so he could continue to revel in the soft sound of her voice. She was just tying the last bow when he returned to the living room, catching his breath slightly at the beautiful scene.

Just like in his memories, the tree was beautiful… the random junk they'd salvaged transformed into holiday décor that matched anything he'd ever seen in a department store window or on the cover of some crafting magazine. And, just like in his memories, Betty was even more beautiful than the tree, bathed in the coloured lights as well as the sunshine that managed to creep into even the trailer's tiny windows this close to noon.

"It's perfect," he confirmed, giving her a quick, awkward hug as he'd always done when the tree was finished… wishing this time that his voice weren't so hoarse… wishing he could say something more… wishing he could get her to stay, instead of leaving, now that their job was done.

"It is," Betty agreed, her own voice no more than a whisper. "Oh, Juggie, I really needed this today." And then, as he made to pull back from her before he said or did something really stupid, she buried her face in his chest for a moment and drew a deep, shuddering breath. Rather than releasing him, her arms stayed looped around his neck as she looked up at him, an unreadable expression in her eyes, and said, "Jughead… I want to apologize."

Betty's heart was pounding so thunderously, she was sure Jughead could both feel it against his chest and hear it in the stillness of the trailer. She hadn't planned this, had never even dreamed she'd have the courage to do this. But she was going to anyway, and consequences be damned. Nice girls never made the first move? Well then screw being nice… and screw her mother's scripts and expectations and conditioning to manipulate in order to control others, instead of just asking for what she wanted. She was more afraid right now of living the next nine years, and then nine after that, the same way she'd lived the past nine, than she was of whatever consequences might arise from speaking up.

She'd been building up to this for hours now… maybe since she first looked up at Pop's and saw Jughead standing there with snow in his hair and the stars in his eyes… definitely since the surge of jealousy and loss she'd felt at his story in the truck about his recent, ridiculous, and apparently unlamented break-up. She'd been absolutely consumed with jealousy towards that unnamed girl in Toledo, not because she'd had a relationship with Jughead – well, yes, because of the relationship, but Betty had always wanted him to be happy and would have contrived to be happy for him if he were – but because she'd done exactly what Betty herself had never had the courage to do: she'd asked him out. She'd asked him out, and the sky hadn't fallen, and the world hadn't ended, and Alice Cooper had never even heard about it. She'd asked him out… and he'd said yes.

And it had occurred to Betty in that moment that this was one part of her life where her years of therapy still hadn't liberated her from her mother's control and conditioning, one part where she was still living the life Alice wanted for her instead of reaching for the life she wanted for herself. So, after all those years of wishing and wanting and waiting for Jughead to ask her out… and then all the additional years of mourning and missing him… it was finally time to take action.

Of course, so far, she hadn't done anything apart from puzzle him by announcing her need to apologize, and then failing to do so or even to say anything else… and possibly to freak him out a little by definitely clinging to him way longer than was appropriate for a friendly hug. Reluctantly, she stepped back, twisting her hands together behind her back as she'd always done as a child when caught in wrongdoing. Jughead made a slight gesture as she stepped away, almost as if he were going to reach for her, but then his hands fell to her sides as he shook his head at her slightly in confusion.

"I don't understand," he said simply. "Apologize for what?"

"For… a lot, actually" she answered, trying to sort her swirl of thoughts into some logical order that could be articulated in English… or at least in human speech of some kind. "For disappearing, this past decade or so. For letting go of our friendship. For acting like all our memories didn't matter to me… like you didn't matter to me. For not really being honest with you, even back in high school. For… for ruining everything because I was stupid and scared and blindly obedient to my mom even though I knew what a toxic nightmare she was, even back then."

Jughead stepped back slightly, putting some distance between them, and her heart cracked just a little at the wary look on his face. "It happens, Betts," he said awkwardly, almost as if he were afraid to let her continue. "Life gets busy, friends grow apart…"

"That's not what happened," she blurted out. "We didn't 'grow apart;' I ran away. I knew what I was doing, and I did it anyway because, as scary as it was to picture my life without you, it was even scarier to imagine telling you the truth."

"Betty, you don't have to do this," Jughead looked downright panicked now, and she could feel her heart breaking. He obviously knew what she was going to say… was obviously desperate to stop her from saying it… obviously didn't want to have to gently turn her down and explain that he'd just never seen her that way…

But now that she'd started, she didn't think she could stop even if she'd wanted to. Maybe this would ruin everything… maybe it would mean she'd never have another night like last night, never have another day like today, never have another Christmas that really felt like Christmas because she spent it with Jughead. Maybe it would be the end of their friendship. But she'd more or less killed their friendship already, hadn't she? This would just be putting the final nail in its coffin.

If so, so be it. At least she'd know… at least she wouldn't carry the weight of regret and unspoken words that had weighed her down since she was 16 years old… at least she'd be miserable on her own terms, rather than miserable because she was trying so hard to meet her mother's definition of a 'nice girl.'

"I'm sorry, Juggie," she all but whispered. "I don't want to hurt you and I don't want to make you uncomfortable, but I do want to be honest with you for once. I owe you that… I owe you everything. And this needs to be said.

"I ruined our friendship, on purpose… I abandoned you completely because I was selfish. I was too much in love with you to be able to bear watching you meet someone else and fall in love with them and build a life with them… I couldn't just accept our friendship for what it was when I so desperately wanted more… when I wanted it to be me that you loved, and not some wonderful, new someone that you met in the world outside Riverdale.

"And I abandoned you because I was scared… way too scared to tell you the truth about how I felt. I knew you didn't feel the same, and that was scary enough. But I'd also let my mom convince me it would mean terrible things about me, as a person, if I made the first move with any guy. And so I was afraid that you wouldn't just reject me… you'd think less of me. And I couldn't face that.

"I loved you so much, and I thought that it would hurt less to run away than it would to just carry on as we were and watch you fall in love with someone else, and way less than it would hurt to tell you the truth and lose you completely.

"But I've missed you ever since, and I've thought of you every day, and I've regretted being such a stupid, scared, coward. And then I looked up last night and there you were, and everything from then to now has felt better than anything in my life has felt since that last night we hung out at Pop's before we left for university.

"And… I'm sorry. I'm sorry I didn't tell you this years ago… years and years ago. And I'm sorry I put my own fear ahead of our friendship and lost you because of it. And I'm sorry I never reached out, in all these years, to see how you were doing. And I'm sorry to make you listen to all this now when I can tell you're just jumping out of your skin with the need to be elsewhere, but…"

She wasn't done apologizing… felt like she'd barely started, in fact, but Betty abruptly fell silent, because Jughead was suddenly kissing her… kissing her the way she'd always dreamed he would. And suddenly, words didn't seem so terribly important.

Had he really thought, just a short while ago, that he'd gained access to Heaven through the smells of hot chocolate and popcorn and the sound of Betty humming as she worked? Jughead laughed at his own foolishness… or would have, if his mouth hadn't been much, much better occupied with its exploration of Betty's. It had taken mere moments to begin to show him the error of his ways; he'd learned rapidly that, hearing Betty say that she loved him – that she'd loved him for years – was a whole other level of Heaven. And then, somehow, his body had caught up to his heart and brain and he'd kissed her… and learned what Heaven really was.

There'd been brief detours to Hell, of course, along the way. When Betty began her apology, he'd been frantic to stop her, convinced that she was going to apologize for abandoning their friendship as an alternative to confronting him about his feelings and trying to find a way to turn him down without devastating him… or possibly apologize for not rescuing him the way she'd rescued every other bit of flotsam that had washed up on the shores of her life over the years. He knew it was coming, and he knew he couldn't bear it, and he'd tried everything he could think of to stop it, short of bolting for the door and escaping into the night.

And then, gradually, her words had begun to penetrate his consciousness. Gradually, he'd heard her talking about her love for him… about her fear that telling the truth would spell disaster… and about the same sense of rightness, of homecoming, that he'd been feeling since he'd first spotted her at the diner last night. Gradually, it had occurred to him that she'd loved him just as hopelessly as he'd loved her, all those years ago… and that it might not be too late to get that back.

Without conscious thought, he'd closed the distance between them, cupped her face tenderly in his hands, and taken her mouth with his own. And in that moment, he'd redefined Heaven – a concept he hadn't even believed in yesterday morning – for the third time in the past hour.

This was far from the smartest thing she'd ever done, Betty Cooper reflected ruefully as she pulled up her contacts in her phone and tapped her mother's number, her palms already sweating in anticipation of the diatribe that was sure to follow. A text would convey the necessary information to her mother, without giving her an opportunity to respond (or at least without giving her an opportunity that couldn't be circumvented by simply ignoring her return texts or turning off her phone). It would be faster, simpler, and dramatically less painful.

But that would just be delaying the inevitable, looking for a way to avoid or defer her mother's strident demands and vicious backlash rather than actually standing up for herself and owning her choices. It would rob her of her peace, leaving her constantly preoccupied with the sense of impending doom from now until she arrived at her parents' place… and actually encountered the doom.

And – Betty smiled secretly to herself at the thought, watching Jughead who leaning in the kitchen doorway, tapping on his phone as he ordered a pizza – she had far better, happier things to be preoccupied with right now than her mother and her demands and the tantrums she threw when those demands weren't met. As if feeling her eyes on him, Jughead glanced up and met her gaze with a smile that made her feel warm all over. Dusk was falling, but they hadn't turned on any lights yet apart from those of the Christmas tree. The coloured lights made the living room seem warmer, more inviting… concealed the shabbiness and accentuated the familiarity.

"Elizabeth?" Alice answered after the first ring, her voice strident and already critical as she chose to dispense with any greeting. "Where on earth have you been? Are you actively trying to ruin Christmas?"

"I told you yesterday, Mom, that the weather was too poor for driving," Betty cut in, carefully keeping her tone even and matter of fact. "I told you last night that, as predicted, the roads had become impassable and I couldn't make it home. I have made extraordinary efforts to do what you asked of me, but I'm an adult now and I need to take responsibility for my own safety. I got off the road, which was the right thing to do. And I told you I'd be in touch with an update, which is what I'm doing now. This is me, being responsible, and keeping my promises."

"The snow stopped hours ago," Alice replied dismissively, "and I refuse to believe you couldn't have come last night if you actually cared about anyone but yourself… if you weren't trying to defy me and insult your sister and her precious babies…"

"Believe whatever you want, Mom," Betty interrupted, still carefully neutral, her eyes on Jughead's face to help steady her, "but please keep it to yourself. I am calling to give you an update on when to expect me, not to invite your feedback." Jughead grinned at her, applauding silently, and she stood to sketch an elaborate bow while, on the other end of the line, Alice responded very differently, but entirely predictably, her voice rising and sharpening as her biting words flowed fast and freely.

Twenty-four hours ago, Betty would have scrambled to apologize, to appease, devastated by the vitriol Alice was spewing and desperate to make it stop.

Tonight, though?

Tonight, she tuned it out, letting the words wash over her in a meaningless torrent, giving her attention to her immediate surroundings instead and finding them entirely satisfactory.

Rather than returning to the couch, Betty stretched out on the floor, her face inches from the tree, enjoying the lights and the shimmer that she and Jughead had created together and the heavy fragrance of the white spruce. Jughead was still watching her, and she patted the carpet beside her invitingly. Without hesitation, he joined her on the floor, curling around her slightly at the foot of their tree.

"You okay?" he mouthed silently, and Betty nodded, even as she shrugged and scrunched up her face. She was okay… but she wasn't great, and she knew he understood. "Can I show you something that might make you smile?" he whispered and Betty nodded again, with no counter signals this time.

Jughead passed her his phone, which was open to a text thread with Pop Tate's name at the top of the screen. The first text, sent by Pop a few minutes ago, was a photo of her car, still blocked in by snow in his parking lot. "I know it's a bit extreme," his next message read, "but I thought you kids needed a bit more time together." "Talk it over," his third message concluded, "and you two can let me know when my plough guy should come back to dig her out."

Betty laughed out loud, having completely lost the thread of her mother's cascade of recriminations.

At the sound of her laughter, Alice fell abruptly, ominously silent.

Betty knew her well enough to know that the silence wouldn't last long… and would be immediately followed by a major escalation of hostilities, so she seized the moment while she could. Still pressed against Jughead's warmth, she drew a deep breath to anchor her calm.

"That's enough, Mom," she said quietly. "I already told you that I'm not looking for or accepting feedback at this stage, I am providing you an update. When the ploughs got out to clear up the snow last night or early this morning, they somehow blocked my car in where it was parked. It's still completely inaccessible."

Alice began to splutter again, clearly about to challenge that assessment, but Betty continued smoothly.

"I'm making other arrangements to get to your house. I'll be arriving shortly after noon tomorrow, and I can stay until about 11:30 Christmas morning when I need to leave for another commitment." Jughead was looking at her questioningly, so she mouthed to him "FP," letting him know she planned to accompany him on his visit. Jughead's answering smile was radiant, and he dropped a quick kiss to her lips that Alice probably could hear over the phone.

"Oh, and Mom?" Betty continued aloud before Alice could even begin to express what she thought of Betty arriving on the afternoon of Christmas Eve… or leaving on Christmas Day, "I won't be coming alone.

"My boyfriend is coming with me."