Betty wasn't a very big fan of driving. She had an older sister and a doting mother, so she had never had to drive herself many places. And on dates at Pop's or the theatre or the park, it was Jughead who brought his dad's truck or his motorcycle. The lack of practice made her a nervous driver, unsure of herself, especially on the highway.

But her head was filled with thoughts of home, of those days when her mother would drive her to school and back, when she Polly made midnight runs for pizza or burgers or ice cream on midsummer nights.

She wanted to cry, knowing Polly was so far away on the farm upstate and her mother was not at all who she thought in those elementary school days. Yes, the former PTA chairwoman was an accomplice in a killing, but it was self-defense. Love for her son, her family.

That certainly was how it felt from two thousand miles and four days away.

Betty realized that in all her fear and exhaustion, she had forgotten to charge her phone the night before. She wanted to call home, to hear her mother's voice and tell her that she was on her way home.

There were many miles to go before she could do that. Even more before she'd see her mother again. But that was okay. Betty switched on the radio, turned it up.

Cheryl let out a groan like an agitated cow and turned it down.

They fought over the volume for a few minutes, Cheryl speaking only in grunts and smacks to Betty's shoulder, and Betty laughing at her misery.

They pulled off the highway an hour later and got hash browns and flapjacks at the drive through of a fast food place; neither of them wanted to stop for too long. They wanted to keep driving, keep putting less and less distance between them and their friends.

They were back on the road in minutes, and Betty noticed that she was quickly tiring of fast food and diners.

Which is saying something, because she practically lived in Pop's. But now, what she wanted was a homecooked meal.

So, they trudged on, Cheryl allowing Betty to slowly turn the music volume up as the hours wore on, either because her hangover was getting better or because she was entirely unconscious. But it was okay. They didn't need to talk; Betty's head was swarming with thoughts of home and family and friends.

As the sun was starting towards the horizon, Cheryl told Betty to pull off the highway at the next exit. So she wasn't unconscious.

Betty and Cheryl had intentionally ordered an excess of food at breakfast and ate the leftovers for lunch. It had been greasy and caloric, but she was undeniably hungry again.

As she sent the Chevrolet rolling down the exit, Betty recognized the place, the signs and street names and buildings.

"Did we come this way on our way out?" Betty asked.

"Mmm-hmm," Cheryl hummed. "Remember that restaurant we were at when you found our story in the newspaper?"

"Uh-huh," Betty said cautiously, guilt reappearing at the memory.

"Well, they had this divine-looking cheesecake pictured on their menu and you clamored out of the place before I could have any."

The town the exit spat them out at could have been Riverdale; Betty remembered how unextraordinary her town was to an outsider. The restaurant was tremendously plain—it had a name like Jack's or Horace's or some other white male name. Betty was, in fact, surprised that Cheryl could pick the place out off the highway.

She must have really wanted cheesecake.

She still looked impressively hungover, Betty felt bad that they didn't have any sunglasses in the car to complete the look. She wondered if cheesecake was one of those foods that was supposed to help with hangovers. Betty had never gotten properly wasted in her life, but she guessed that the creamy dessert might help.

They decided to draw out the meal, ordered drinks and looked at appetizers and had their first real conversation of the day.

"Last night. Bad," Cheryl opened.

"Last night very bad," Betty concurred. "I can't believe I'm actually pretty much ready to go back to Riverdale."

"Amen," Cheryl said. "Who do you want to see first?"

"My mom, obligatorily," Betty said. "I must be putting her through hell right now."

There was something like jealousy in Cheryl's tired eyes; Betty knew her mother might as well be the Devil, but she didn't know what to say, so instead she ordered a plate of cheese fries for the table and asked Cheryl who it was she wanted to see.

"Josie. Veronica," Cheryl said. The latter name was a surprise and there was something hesitant about the way Cheryl said Josie's name. Again, Betty was tactful enough not to pry. Maybe if she was the person everyone thought she was, she would have. Maybe it would have felt good for Cheryl to share whatever things were on her mind but they had had plenty of time with that, and they would still on the way back. At some point, she would bring it up. But Betty didn't need to know every detail of her cousin's life to know who was sitting across the table from her.

Whatever it was Cheryl was regretting, Betty was willing to forgive. She had spent too much time lately being resentful and, dear God, she didn't want to turn into Ben From The Party. Despite the Black Hood's best efforts and the whole damn world's best efforts, Betty was not going to become some caricature of evil and blame.

Other people's pain was not a solution, just an unfortunate side effect of living. Betty trusted Cheryl knew that, too.

"I want to sit at Pop's with Jughead," Betty said suddenly. "I want to see his goofy face when they bring out the burger." Jughead always eyed a hot plate of burgers and fries as if it was the first food he'd seen in days.

Sometimes, maybe, it was, considering his life at the trailer park.

The air in the restaurant now was warm and thick with the smell of All-American cuisine cooking in the kitchen; Jughead would have loved it.

Betty had been hit by Ben and his thuggish friends before Cheryl found them. They struck had struck her in the stomach once and it knocked the wind out of her, but now she could practically taste their fries through her nose.

They ate cheesecake and talked about what everyone back in Riverdale was probably saying.

"Reggie is definitely going to say we hooked up," Cheryl said. She was right.

"Given our town's history, there's no question that everyone thinks we've been murdered," Betty said.

"Even despite all your communication with your friends and family?" Cheryl asked.

"Murder finds a way."

Cheryl sat back in the booth, pushed her plate of fries away. "Do you think everyone's going to treat us differently when we get back? Like we're going to run off again."

"Maybe. Remember the day everyone thought FP killed Jason?" Betty asked cautiously. "They were all looking at him like he was going to murder them."

Cheryl took a sip of water. "I got a little of that after the truth came out. But it was mostly outweighed by sympathy."

Betty wondered how people would react if they found out about the body that had been in the Cooper kitchen.

"Do you remember that day we got rained in in gym and we got to play dodgeball instead of running the mile outside?" Cheryl asked randomly.

"Um, yeah, I do," Betty said and wished they could be gone long enough to miss the day they would actually have to make the four dreaded laps around the track outside.

"We were all getting so dramatic about the game, blowing off steam, remember?"

Betty did, recalled beaning Veronica with the ball and the horrifying smack that hopefully didn't hurt as much as it sounded like it did.

"Well, when Reggie got me out, I yelled at him: I'm gonna kill you, Mantle! You know, joking around and being overaggressive."

"Reggie said you couldn't if you tried."

"Yeah," Cheryl said. "But then after class, Coach Clayton pulled me aside and looked in my eye and said so strictly, 'You can't say that.'"

"What?"

"He was like, 'After what your father did, you can't say that.' As if anyone thinks I'm actually going to kill Reggie Mantle in cold blood over a game of dodgeball. It's just dodgeball."

Betty laughed. Everything seemed so stupid in that moment, like every bad thing that had happened to them had been the product of gross, almost comical overreactions. Hell, she'd driven across the country just to get out of the house.

The Black Hood seemed especially laughable, too; a self-righteous murderer claiming terrorism was doing the town some big favor.

Stupid, stupid world.

Their cheesecake was served, and it was far better than Betty had expected. The trip had picked up again, it seemed, the two of them giggling pointlessly in a booth so far away from home.

Until suddenly, across the table, Cheryl's smile shut down.

"Betty, we need to leave," she said urgently, eyes tracing something behind the blonde in the entryway.

"What?" Betty turned to look, but Cheryl waved her hand in warning.

"Do not turn around."

"Oh my God, what?"

"It's that creep from the rest stop. He just walked in," Cheryl's voice was so quiet that Betty was straining to hear her.

Her stomach dropped. She wasn't ready for another fight. "The man from Greendale? Are you sure"

"Yeah, it's either him or his identical twin with a matching gash through his face," Cheryl said dryly. Betty had cut the man from his left temple to the right corner of his mouth. It was not a wound that would be fading any time soon.

The two girls were silent for a moment, weighing their options, the stillness of the moment stifling.

Cheryl finally spoke, eyes still trained on the man across the room. "Okay, just sit really still. When he gets seated, we will slowly move out of the restaurant and maybe then that modern-day bounty hunter won't even see us."

Betty nodded, holding her breath. With any luck, the man wouldn't be seated anywhere near them.

Of course, anyone with Blossom blood had no luck at all to begin with, and the man was lead right past them and into the booth right behind Cheryl.

Betty tried to avoid eye contact, but from what she could see, the man hadn't recognized them yet.

They sat completely still in the booth, Betty trying to tell if the man from Greendale was watching them from the corner of his eye like she was him. He didn't seem to be, he was staring into his lap and clenching and unclenching his jaw in upset.

"You all finished there?" The perky voice of their waiter made Betty and Cheryl flinch; both of them had been too engrossed in the man's demeanor.

Neither of them answered.

"You finished?" the waiter tried again.

"Uh, yes, sorry," Betty said as quietly as she could. "Can we get the check, please?"

"Of course!" The waiter cleared the empty cheesecake plate, retired to the kitchen, and came out moments later with the bill.

She had barely turned her back by the time they were standing up, Cheryl having slapped down a couple of bills.

"Keep the change," she whispered.

Out of the corner of her eye as she was turning around, Betty saw the man move. He was standing up.

"Move," she mumbled, pushing Cheryl's back as they stumbled out the door.

They were racing through the parking lot, jumped over the doors into the car without even opening them.

Betty was in the driver's seat; she still had the keys and jammed them into the ignition as fast as she could, rolled the car backward and out of the parking spot.

The man from Greendale was climbing into his truck.

"God, of course he has a truck," Cheryl grumbled. "We should have a psychopath bingo game going. We could have a blackout by now."

Betty cut the wheel and bolted out of the lot. The man from Greendale was hot on their trail.

"Just get on the highway and we will be fine, we'll lose him," Cheryl said, though her voice was far from confident.

And Betty suddenly couldn't remember how the hell the roads in this town worked.

"Wh-where did we come from agai—" Betty started, but was cut short by the crisp sound of a gunshot.

Cheryl dropped into her seat, petrified. Betty leaned so close to the wheel she could barely see out the windshield. She was definitely going the wrong way to get to the highway.

Two more gunshots and Betty heard Cheryl gasp desperately for breath, reminding her to stop holding her breath; she certainly couldn't black out behind the wheel. Have to keep a cool head.

Despite her best efforts, the car was swerving wildly because Betty couldn't keep her hands in one place.

"Drive faster," Cheryl hissed, looking out the side view mirror at the truck that was rapidly approaching. She clawed at the car controls and the car's roof too-slowly made its way into the closed position.

They were on their way out of the city. If no one had called the police by now, certainly no one would once they got onto some empty country road.

"Shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot," Betty cursed angrily.

"Don't say that," Cheryl snapped. She was right, considering.

A gunshot sounded horribly, somewhere behind them the bullet tore open a hole in the roof.

Panicked, Betty cut a hard left, hopping the truck wouldn't be able to follow. Her prayers were not answered; the man from Greendale was still screaming curses at them from her truck.

They were coming up on a bridge; it was low enough that they would probably survive the fall, but Betty was still horrified she wouldn't be able to keep the Chevrolet on course.

She couldn't even keep the cars on course in Mario Kart; the bridge at the end of one level (what was it called? DK Jungle?) had always given her trouble, even though it was perfectly straight and the last obstacle before the finish line. Betty was going to go off the bridge, she thought in horror.

"Go faster," Cheryl chided despite Betty's concerns.

This isn't freaking Mario Kart, Betty thought, and steeled herself up to make it to the goddamn finish line. She was there, almost there, almost there, and a glimpse in her rearview mirror told her that the man from Greendale was starting to fall behind, he was fumbling with his shotgun in the front seat.

They were a quarter of the way across the bridge, the end closer.

Halfway, Betty sure she could make it now.

Bang!

A harsh noise knocked Betty's confidence, left her wondering what was going on.

The car was slowing and she could see the man from Greendale too closely in her rearview mirror, every crease of his resentful face, his expression so dramatic his wound was opening and tiny trails of blood were working their way down his face.

Had she been shot?

"Cursed car, cursed car!" Cheryl screeched, slamming two fists down on the dashboard.

The car. It had given out.

They were still moving, but barely, and the man from Greendale looked like he was going to shoot to kill.

Betty held her breath, floored the gas, and sent hand over hand to drive the car right off the bridge.

They fell ten feet, twenty, then the hood of the car hit the dirt with an earsplitting chorus of destructive sounds and both their faces hit the dash.

"Do not move," Betty urged almost silently, though she probably didn't have to tell Cheryl, who was frozen in fear and pain. "We are dead," she said coyly anyway.

"Roger," Cheryl managed.

"Dammit to hell!" They heard the man from Greendale scream from the bridge.

Two rapid gunshots fired, struck the back hood of the car with a deafening noise that was almost impossible not to flinch at.

The man from Greendale didn't leave; he stood on the bridge and paced and cursed at the top of his lungs, to nobody. He probably assumed they were dead, the dim evening light keeping him from seeing them still intact in the car.

At this point they really should have been; how many times had they cheated death?

As the man continued cursing them out from above, Betty tried to count. She probably should have been murdered at some point while investigating Jason's murder. Definitely should have been shot by the Black Hood by now. Should have been killed by the man from Greendale the first time, killed at the beach for Ben's fortune. Maybe some other instances were falling through the cracks, Betty thought, remembering each instance with sickening clarity.

/

It was completely dark by the time either of them stirred; Cheryl took in a deep breath. Betty followed suit.

"Is he gone?" Cheryl ventured more loudly than she would have if she wasn't certain he was.

"Yeah, I would bet he is," Betty said at a normal volume. She turned the car off, which she should have done a long time ago since white smoke was issuing from the front hood, but she didn't want to alert the man from Greendale. "Can you stand?" she asked because she wasn't sure she could herself.

"I think so." Cheryl sounded strained as she unbuckled her seatbelt which, probably did save lives today, and tried to pry the car door open. It was too screwed up to get open easily, and for once the roof was up, so both struggled with the door until finally Betty got hers open. Cheryl crawled over the console and followed Betty out the driver's side.

They turned and examined the damage done, the car completely totaled. The front hood was all scrunched up, pressed between the ground and a tree. The back of the car now had two distinctive bullet holes in the trunk, and the bumper had fallen off of the back from the impact. Betty understood why the man from Greendale hadn't come down the slope to check if they were still alive.

It was twofold, the first reason being that the fall looked utterly brutal and the second being that the slope from below the bridge to back on the road was pretty intense.

"Sorry about the car," was all Betty could think to say.

"Eh, it's fine," Cheryl said without taking her eyes from the crash. "I mean, If I cared that much about it I wouldn't have brought it on a week-long road trip across the States."

A beat.

Cheryl turned away. "I mean, it's the car my brother drove to his death in so. I guess I'm kind of happy to see it go."

Betty followed her cousin up the hill.

"Where are we gonna go?" Betty asked as they made their way up the steep incline.

"Back into town. Find police. Turn ourselves in," Cheryl planned vaguely.

It was enough for Betty.

Dirt and leaves slid with their every step and made them work to get back on the road. Overhead, a white plastic bag stood out in the night, caught in the branches of a tall tree, the wind sending it rippling violently on the branch like flag.

They tread on.

Later, they would be back in Riverdale, the town the Black Hood had terrorized, the town whose South Side had held Jason Blossom captive for the week leading up to his death, the town where all the horrors had taken place.

They would be serenated by the smell of freshly-cut grass and flowers blooming for Spring.

Betty's house would look exactly the way it did on all the mornings she'd walked with Archie to school, the he'd left her heartbroken (the night Jason's body had been found in the river, eyes blank and staring at the sky). It would look the way it had when Chic brained a man, but the house would keep her secrets, continue to chronicle her life.

They would return and Riverdale would be Riverdale, a twisted town in a twisted world. It would have its depravities and its comforts. Underground, there would be bodies and above ground there would be the people who helped bury them.

Soon she would be back, yes, but Betty knew that there was bone meal underfoot no matter where she tread.

/

A/N- The moral of this story is that the world sucks everywhere, but with some people it sucks a little less. Also: always wear your seatbelt.