"Betty." He muttered, his palm sweaty against her shoulder as he tried to shake her awake. "Come on, get up. You know you're not supposed to be sleeping. You have a concussion."

"A mild one." She grumbled in response. "What do you want, Archie?"

Archie dropped down onto her bed, the bouncing mattress making her head ache even more.

"I need to talk to you." He said.

With a groan, Betty rolled over, slowly sitting up with his help.

She was surprised her mother had let him into her room at all; Alice had not been pleased to find two half-tipsy teenage boys, even if one of them was Kevin, at her door, her seventeen-year-old daughter, bandaged, bloodied, concussed and blabbering incoherently, in between them, her arms tossed around their shoulders.

"Are you okay?" Betty asked.

Archie nearly smiled. "I should be asking you that. Do you remember what happened?"

She shook her head.

The best explanation was that she had lost her footing some time after she had gone to retrieve wood for the fire, sliding down an embankment when she slipped, hitting her head on a rock in the process and knocking herself unconscious. Apparently, the doctor had said that it wouldn't have been strange for her not to remember much of the night before.

"What's up, Arch?"

His lips formed a thin line, and he remained silent for a few moments, as if searching for the right words.

"Betty." Archie pronounced carefully. "Last night, you kept telling me that you remembered, that you remembered everything... What did you mean by that?"

Betty blinked.

"I don't know." She admitted. She didn't recall any of that.

The only memory coming to mind was Cheryl complaining about the bandage currently plastered to her forehead to cover the stitches. She'd shaken her head in disgust, mumbling something about how the gauze would clash with Betty's Vixen uniform, whatever that meant.

"Are you sure?" He asked.

"Positive." Betty replied. "I have no idea what I was talking about."

Archie still seemed unsure, but he rose, patting her knee.

"Get dressed." He said. "We're meeting the gang at Pop's. They want to see for themselves that you're still alive."

Betty groaned. "Archie, I want to sleep."

"Not a chance." Archie told her. "I'll stay up here if I have to, B."

With a defeated eye roll, she threw her covers back, slowly standing. The world was finally steady again.

He raised an eye brow in faux amusement. "You want me to stay, right?"

"Oh, get out!" She laughed, tossing a frilly throw pillow towards him. It missed him by at least a mile. "I'll be down in a second."

"Betty, if you go back to bed-"

"Archie!" Betty warned. "Get out!"

"Okay, okay." He chuckled, holding his hands up in surrender as he reached for the door knob.

A thought suddenly hit her hard, making her brain feel even more jumbled.

She did remember something else, something far more significant that Cheryl's criticisms.

"Arch?"

He paused. "Yeah?"

"Was..." Betty began, avoiding his gaze in favor of her shaggy white carpet. "Was Jughead really there last night?"

Archie sighed. "I don't know, B. You claimed that you saw him, but you were alone when we found you."

But Archie hadn't been the one to find her, at least, he hadn't been the first.

No, someone else, sounding more panicked than she had ever heard him, she still didn't understand why Jughead would have been so worried about her, she didn't deserve his concern, someone else had pulled her from the ground before her friends.

Someone had tried to help her first.

I am protecting my own. He had said.

He had been protecting her, though from what, exactly, she didn't know, but she did know that she wanted to find out, no matter the cost.

Not that Jughead owed her any sort of explanation, especially after the way she had treated him.

He didn't owe her a thing.

"Betty?" Archie's voice snapped her back to reality. "You okay?"

"Sure." She promised, yanking a random dress from her closet. "I'll be down in a sec."