Apologies for the literal month wait. I have absolutely no excuse.
Further notes at bottom.
xxxx
Scenery flew past in a mesmerising swirl of colours, greens, browns, greys, yellows, a full mundane palette. Halona found herself going cross-eyed trying to keep track of everything that blurred past; a tree, metal railing, another tree, some houses, more trees.
It was something that had become a habit, lagging on from childhood, where she would pretend that she could see a little running man scaling the treacherous terrain with ease along with the car.
"What are you looking at, habibi?"
"The little running man, mama! He runs so fast, he's waving at me as he runs!"
"Make sure to sit back, habibi, you don't want to damage your eyes."
The image of her mother was held in her mind for a second. Memories of strong Arabic fragrant oil, oud, pinched her nose, sharp with it's sentiment and nostalgia.
Prior to marrying her father, her mother, Elena, had worked for prestigious banks all over the globe, but in all the stories Halona had been told as a child, her mother held the Middle Eastern countries close to her heart. Saudi Arabia, Iran, Qatar, Dubai, Kuwait, each place sounding more and more fascinating and wonderful than the last. Elena had told Halona that she had even worked with royalty.
"Did you meet any princesses?" seven year old Halona had asked, eagerly.
Her mother had just laughed, in the effortlessly glamourous way she did, and had kissed her daughter on the cheek. "I have only had the pleasure of meeting a princess once, habibi."
"Was she strong, mama?"
Another powdery kiss on the other cheek. "As of right now, she needs to go to sleep, as it is past her bedtime. But I don't have a doubt in my mind that she will be."
It was how she had met her father. A rich lineage that had been built upon the manufacturing of whiskey, the Ridgemounts had immigrated to Canada from Scotland, where Elena Ilmorn had met the prestigious Igor Ridgemount.
Apparently, there was an unspoken rule that ran in the family that everyone in it had to have a vaguely pompous sounding sort of name. It went with the branding.
As the bus continued to chug its way along, she idly traced a cloud in the condensation and wondered what her parents would think of their daughter if they knew what she was doing. So promising, studying Law at a prestigious university, yet running off to go help an ex-lover / potential convict and his son. The fifteen year age gap was also sure to go down well.
Max's existence was no secret, a matter that was met with raised eyebrows, but she had the luxury of family support for her choice to keep and raise him. The subject of his father was...put off, to say the least. Both the parents knew it was someone from that Small Quaint Town they had visited That One Summer, her mother had the assumption that it was a whirlwind summer romance with a rebel youth, and Halona just hadn't corrected her.
There had been countless times where she lay awake in the darkness of night, pulling Max closer to her chest, her mind running around and 'round in circles, considering, sometimes doubting, what had occurred 3 years ago. Had she really been as prepared as she'd thought she had been for a relationship with someone nearly twice her age? And when she was seventeen? In the present, she wouldn't trade Max for the world, but looking back at her past self, her actions seemed so utterly foolish and naïve.
Especially considering how she hadn't made it a one-off engagement, returning now years later.
Waiting for the bus with Max wailing in her arms, Halona had actually prematurely turned around to head back to her dorm room, scathingly cursing herself for being drawn back into what they had both agreed to keep dead. But then all it would take would be for her to remember that the Jones were facing the brunt of brutal labelling, with one being sent off to prison for a crime he didn't commit, and the other being carted around to God knows where, and all thanks to a faulty justice system, and she would be marching straight back to where she started.
Her father had always drilled a sort of philosophy into her head. You are coming from a point of power, Halona. It therefore means that if you see someone in need, it is your duty to help them, as power is meant to be used for that purpose.
Perhaps not necessarily the best applicable situation that her father had been referring to, but injustice was injustice. And a part of her knew that if she didn't go at all, even after knowing she could help, she would hold on to that regret for a very, very long time.
There had been the matter of her work at college, which turned out to actually be not that big of a deal.
After she had packed in a new record of under two seconds, she had firmly bounced Max on her hip as she went off to speak with the administration, and, in a tone of voice carefully moulded off her mother's no-room-for-argument voice, very firmly insisted that there had been a family emergency out of town.
The lady she spoke with clearly thought that she had better things to do than deal with a student's education, rolled her eyes and told her that her professors would email her all assignments for the winter break.
And that had been pretty much it. Surprisingly.
If there was one thing Halona was grateful for from college was the relieving lack of communication between the administration and her parents. Not that her parents were terrible, or anything like that, but it certainly graced her with a certain stretch of independence.
Independence for helping the father of her child who was incarcerated, specifically. But, minor details.
Which brought her back to reality. Sitting on an overnight bus heading to Riverdale, little Max pressing handprints to the condensation on the window, and a whole lot of baggage to deal with upon her arrival.
Fishing into her pocket, Halona dug out a small book for the rest of the ride. Turned out that the college library had been particularly helpful. As she flipped it open to her spot, the title flashed to where other passengers could read the cursive, had they been paying attention.
The History of the Blossom Maple Syrup Industry – A Biography
xxxx
The door that connected the police station and the cells opened. One of Sheriff's goons stepped inside, as monotone and undescriptive as the rest of them. The only vaguely individual feature of his was that his voice sounded like he was continuously trying to cough up a fur-ball every time he opened his mouth.
"Your fiancé has arrived to visit," he nasally reported.
FP's frown increased in intensity, shifting into a glower. "I don't-"
I'm sure it goes without saying that all the breath was stolen from his lungs the moment he saw the swish of a all-too-familiar cream shawl from behind the positively grey officer. Added on that she also had an child oh her hip who looked a little too like her for it to be a babysitting occasion or coincidence, and the poor man had practically forgotten how to use his tongue.
This was less of a problem for Miss Halona Ridgemount.
"Oh, I know, darling," she said, each and every word oozing class and wealth, if not the slightest part a pantomime.
"I am dreadfully sorry for the unexpected visit, but you can't have thought that I would have simply stayed out of the country on that business trip." She waved a hand, the picturesque image of a high socialist who did such things as go on out-of-country business trips. All she needed was elbow long evening gloves and a ring on each finger, just for punctuation.
"I rearranged as soon as I heard of this hoo-rah going on."
FP still hadn't quite managed to form coherent sentences just yet, so she turned to the guard. "Would you be a doll, and allow me and my fiancé a moment of privacy? There are many things we need to discuss."
Severe understatement.
Fur-Ball Voice didn't appear to be terribly concerned. He shrugged, and pulled the door to, leaving the three of the alone in a room thick with unresolved tensions.
"So..." Halona said, considerably and visibly far more uncomfortable than the façade for the guard had been. She didn't sound nearly as so playful as when he called her, and was refusing to meet his eyes. "Uh.."
She didn't continue with that impeccable train of thought, as the toddler gurgled on her hip, and she hoisted him into her arms, softly cooing at him to keep him calm.
"Hal..." FP's voice croaked, his dry lips cracking as he licked them. "Is that..?" He cleared his throat.
"You look..." Different after 3 years? Bizarre standing in front of my prison cell?
"Well," he finished pathetically.
Halona finally looked up at him, as if remembering why she was there, and narrowed her eyes at him. "Really? That's all you have to say for your self, Forsythe? You call me out of the blue, and neglect to tell me you've been arrested for murder!"
He furrowed his brows. "How'd'ya...?" His son's face flashed in his mind, quickly throwing back to when Jughead had been asking him about the phone number.
"Jughead called you," he realised aloud.
She snorted, but for once he didn't hear even a vague sense of humorous undertones. "Excuse me, but you're still not addressing the elephant in the room here, Jones. You were arrested for murder and it just happened to slip your mind to tell me?" Her voice steadily rose throughout her accusations.
"Oh, I ain't addressin' the elephant in the room?" FP snapped, springing up from where he was lounging on the unforgiving stone bench of his cell.
"What about this little un', then?" He gestured to the toddler, who was starting to shift uncomfortably at hearing the raised voices of the adults in the room.
"How old is he, two or so? Coincidental? If it is, I'm all ears."
She glowered at him. "That's different." He noticed how she didn't correct him.
"Different, huh?" He laughed, perhaps more bitterly than he'd intended. "That's rich."
Halona flushed a dark red. "You know, I didn't have to come, especially if your going to be such an ass about it," she snapped back.
"The why did you!"
His words reverbed around the room, stunning the two of them at the volume of his statement. Even with the deathly silence that followed, the two of them could hear what he said ringing in their ears, though more of a mental predicament than a physical one. The kid started to cry at the loud noise, causing Halona to divert her attention to help calm his fear.
FP bit on his tongue, regret easily seeping into him. He didn't want his grand reunion with her to spark an argument between the two of them, and from the look on her face, neither did she.
He slumped back down onto his bench, burying his head into his hands, grabbing at fistfuls of his hair. In his mind, he was transported back to when Clifford Blossom had visited him.
A true devil in disguise. His soft, poisonous whispers into his ear. Threats carefully veiled with velvet words. The sickly stench of maple syrup and whiskey on his breath. FP's son. How FP's son's life was on the line. And another. Another name. His words caressing that name, a name that he should never dared to've spoken. Talk of how she was far to precious to get tangled up into the sticky business of murder.
"You shouldn't've come, Hal," FP said, wearily.
In his peripheral vison, he could see her taking more tentative steps, sitting on the floor at the base of the bars.
"You called, Jughead called." She shrugged, pulling the kid onto her lap.
"I gave you that number for emergencies; I think it's pretty safe to class this as one."
But it's not safe, he wanted to protest. He refrained, knowing that if he did, then she would drill him as to why, and (knowing her) proceed to resolve the issue. An issue that could get her killed.
She gestured for him to join her on the floor. Once he'd obliged, she lifted up one of the kid's arms to reach through the bars towards him.
"Max." she spoke softly, a tone far more akin to the one he was familiar with from 3 years ago. "This is your dad."
Max, he thought, a little giddily. His second son.
Whether or not Max properly understood what his mother was saying, he reached forward eagerly towards the figure behind bars.
"Dad, dad, dad, dad," he garbled, most likely just repeating his mom, but it made FP's heart lift.
"Hey, Max," he said, the words close to getting stuck in his throat. He leant forward to plant a kiss atop his head of unruly curls, causing Max to giggle when he hit his head on the metal rungs of the cell.
"I didn't want you to blame yourself."
Halona was very pointedly looking at his shoulder, but her eyes were unfocused, most likely lost in her own world of thoughts. There was a chance that she hadn't even realised that she'd spoken out loud.
"When we were together...you always seemed so ashamed of yourself. Like you were just waiting for me to disintegrate at your touch or something. Why we agreed to break off contact, agreed that I would go to college as my parents wanted, so that I could pursue a career. I didn't want you to feel as though you'd ruined my life."
She shifted her gaze to his. "Max is my greatest joy to this day. And I-"
Her words faltered, and he saw that her line of sight had slowly moved down to his top pocket of his flannel. "What?"
Though decidedly unreadable, her whole face soften visibly. "You kept it?"
Before he could ask what she was talking about, her hand reached towards him, and he held his breath sub-consciously. He struggled to find the answer as to why he did; hence, the sub-conscious part.
Her fingers looped around the red ribbon, that had been poking out just enough to visibly clash against the dark pattern of his flannel, pulling it free slowly. It fluttered in the still air, as she regarded it with bittersweet fondness.
"'Course I did. You asked me to."
Max was mesmerised by the thin stand that his mother was running through her spindly fingers, and made an effort to grab for it. Smiling, Halona surrendered the ribbon, and both parents watched endearingly as he tried diligently to mimic how Halona had woven the delicate threat through her fingers.
"To me, it seems so silly now," Halona sighed. "For me to put so much unnecessary emphasis and importance into a fucking ribbon."
FP's eyebrows shot up in surprise. "I didn't know you swore."
"Only on special occasions. Its been a long couple of days."
"Fair 'nuff." He shifted his weight for where he was sitting on the floor. "But does it really matter? At the time, it was somethin' that you found important. So what if you've changed your mind now."
"I suppose." She paused. "Forsythe, you know that me being here isn't for me to rekindle whatever we had years ago."
Of course she wasn't. Times had changed, and so had they. He nodded, swallowing. "Yeah, I know."
"That's not to say that you can't see Max or anything," she hurriedly followed up. "Just...I didn't come here to be with you romantically."
He leant forward, his dark eyes trained on her. "So why did you?"
She blinked at him. "To get you out."
He looked at her shocked. "There is no way in hell you're gonna do a jail break."
Halona scowled at him. "No, you dolt, I'm gonna get you a lawyer. Jughead and his delightful friend, Betty, were very insistent that you were innocent, and I trust that."
"I can't afford a lawyer-"
Cue an exasperated eye roll. "I wouldn't offer to get you a lawyer and then ask you to pay for them. I'll cover it."
"No," he interrupted. "Absolutely not."
"Swallow your pride, Jones, and accept help for once in your life. I'm getting you a lawyer, end of discussion. My family has too much money to know what to do with, honestly, it is not an issue." Shifting her weight on the floor, and, in tern, Max who was sitting on her lap, she continued.
"Also, I'm here for another reason."
"Which is?"
"Jughead."
A pointed eyebrow rose. "What about Jughead?"
"When we spoke, he said he was staying with his best friend, the Andrews I believe it was? Anyway, point is, with you in...here, social services are most likely going to be involved soon. Which means that it is highly likely he is going to be sent to a foster home."
He leant back. "How far away is it," he asked, already dreading the answer.
"Two towns over. Which is why he's going to stay with me, if you'd let me."
He frowned, thumb and forefinger rubbing against the patches where his stubble had grown back particularly rough. "How you planning to do that?"
He was graced with one of her smiles, though one he was far less familiar with, which he wished he didn't have to be introduced to; thin. Her mouth had practically become a tight-lipped line, and bore little resemblance to an actual joyful smile. To be fair, he reminded himself, their situation had little to be joyful about.
"I think you may already have an idea, Forsythe. The guard certainly helped with hints at our introduction."
xxxx
"So what exactly do you propose?" Jughead asked, mouth full of burger. Considering how casual Pop's interior was, or just the general impression of the establishment, it was funny how many times it had been used as a location for critical discussions. He reckoned Pop should rent it out for that specific purpose. The man would make millions in under a day.
The lady sitting opposite him had apparently only arrived in town a couple hours ago, but an invitation to Pop's via text from someone he's only met in person once is still an invitation to Pop's. Plus, she offered to pay the bill.
Halona gave him a wry smile. "Well, you certainly hit the nail on the head more aptly than perhaps you intended."
The noise that came out of Jughead was an unusual combination between a gag, a cough and a splutter. Truly, a revolutionary advancement in human biological reflexes.
"You're going to marry him?" he exclaimed, once he managed to get his bodily functions under control. "My dad?"
It was a wonder that Halona actually heard him, too busy being consumed by pearls of laughter at his reaction.
"Not quite," she said, between giggles. "Just officially announce my presence as his fiancée. Funnily enough, it takes really little effort to become someone's fiancée legally. All I need to is to make it known to social services that I am to be Mrs Jones in the foreseeable future, and then, as I am apart of the family side of custody, I can become your guardian. Then, Forsythe gets out, he becomes your legal guardian again, we pretend that our "engagement" is broken off, I go back to college."
She took a break to sip on her milkshake (strawberry, to match his choice). "Hell of a lot easier than having to take training to become eligible to foster you."
"Won't they question the age difference?"
A flicker of a mock scandalised expression played on her features, as she lifted her hand to her mouth in the perfect display of "shock".
"It's rude to ask a lady for her age, good sir."
But then her face morphed back into one of seriousness. "Besides, it's hardly any of their business. Once you hit 20 or 21, you look as though you are literally any age in your twenties. If anyone does actually require my age, I'll just say 27 or something. While being over 21, I am actually technically legally recognised as an adult so they can't really do anything, but a 10 year age gap sounds more reasonable than a 15 one."
She popped a fry in her mouth. "Simple."
Jughead wasn't sure he'd heard right.
"I'm sorry, but your plan, if asked about anything by officials, is to lie?"
His face had a mind of its own, shifting and twisting, but he knew for sure that it must have created a look of pure incredulousness.
"What if they, y'know, check? And found out you've lied? Then what?"
"Darling, I'm afraid that even if they are not 100% convinced at my face value, likelihood is they won't ask questions." She smiled apologetically. "Family connections and money. Never my preferred strategy, but my family's reputation proceeds them – the authorities know it's better to just not ask questions."
"How does that make you any better than the Blossoms then? Using your name to get your own way?"
"When did I ever try to pretend I was better than them?" A long drawn out sip of milkshake. "But also, if you are particularly concerned with that, its all about reputation. I don't do things such as pay-offs or bribery, God no, but they know my family was last seen working closely with the Blossoms. They'll think that if they start to look into my case just a little too much, that the Blossoms will be on their case."
She shrugged. "Just utilising pre-conceived ideas about myself and twisting them so that it works in out benefit."
Jughead swallowed uncomfortably. "I'm not sure how I feel about that."
As someone who held the highest regards for the truth, all the misdirection seemed like he was cheating. The game may have never been fair to him, but he wasn't a cheater.
Halona sighed. "Me neither kid. And I've had a lifetime to get used to far worse trickery."
She raised her glass in a faux cheers. "Drink to a prosperous marriage?"
Jughead smiled despite himself, shook his head, but raised his glass to meet hers anyway. "Not strictly speaking a marriage, though, is it?"
She tossed him a wink, if a little more for effect than genuine light-heartedness.
"I ain't making any promises, kid," she said, mirroring her last parting words with him.
Her tone suggested otherwise.
xxxx
"I ain't an expert on proposin', but shouldn't I get a ring?"
He was directly facing her now, only separated by his personal steel cage. She brushed her lips against her knuckles, where her hands were tightly balled up into fists. Perhaps he was flattering himself, but her action looked as though it was to prevent her from moving closer to him. Or perhaps that was just his ego talking. Seemed more likely.
"One thing at a time, Jones. First, we'll get you out of here. Then you can choose the flashiest ring you desire."
xxxx
NOTES:
For those wondering, habibi is a term of endearment in Arabic, which is akin to 'cherub' I believe. It is almost positively spelt wrong here, and this is not meant to be seen as any confirmation that Halona's mother is Arabic, it is just something that my mum would always call me and my sister growing up, and she too worked in all the countries mentioned as well, despite not being Arabic.
Remember when I was confident I could have this story done by the time the new season was out? Me too. The good ol' days.
Any comments, thoughts or concerns are welcome x
Alex