A/N: This is it, guys, the end. If you enjoyed it, I'm glad. This is it for this site in regards to my work, the formatting and lack of feedback aren't all that welcoming but if you want to read the first 5 chapters of this fic's sequel, it's over on AO3 under Smudge. Thanks for reading!

September 2017

"Is it done, Cheryl?"

"Of course, Nana Rose. Would I ever let you down?"

"I knew I could count on you, my sweet girl."

The Aftermath

It was true when Hiram Lodge told Betty he hadn't admitted to anything; he really hadn't directly confessed to a single crime he wouldn't be able to weasel his way out of. He did, however, give the police enough probable cause to start looking into his business dealings. Which led to investigations into his businesses, both legitimate and fraudulent.

While no one one could connect him to a violent crime, they could connect him to several counts of real estate fraud as well as the original crime of embezzlement that had landed him in prison the first time.

At least he knew what to expect when he went back to prison.

Sophomore Year

"Was it true, Kevin," Betty questions, "the part about your dad and Mayor McCoy having an affair?"

Stabbing morosely at the food in front of him, he exhales loudly and pushes the plate away before leaning back into the vinyl Pop's booth. "Yeah. My mom is overseas and he's sleeping with someone else. Am I supposed to be happy step-siblings with Josie now?"

Betty reaches over and grabs Kevin's hand, holding it in hers. "I'm sorry, Kev."

Shrugging, he just nods at her. "At least when I showed up to a family dinner with my Serpent boyfriend he couldn't say a word. So, there's that."

"There is that," Betty repeats, smiling at him.

"How are you doing, Veronica?"

Flopping down on Betty's bed, she hugs a pillow to her chest as she huffs dramatically. "You mean since my mom rolled on my dad and testified against him? Not that I don't think she shouldn't have, but ugh, B, the drama of it all is too much. We need to take a girls day, no boys, full treatment. What do you say?"

Betty considers her for a moment. "What about money? Didn't they freeze your family's assets?"

"Yes. Daddy's assets," Veronica tells her with a sly smile. "Good thing my mom's been preparing for this for a long time, isn't it?"

"How long is he going to be gone for?" she asks him as he lays his head into the curve of her neck, wrapping his arms around her.

"Not long, just a few months," he murmurs into her skin.

Betty hugs him tight. "I'm sorry, Jug."

"It could be worse, I know," he tells her, lifting his head up to meet her eyes. "It's really not that bad compared to what it could be, especially with him testifying against Hiram."

She presses a quick kiss to his lips before saying, "We can go visit him every weekend, Jug. And make sure he has, I don't know, plenty of cigarettes for currency or something."

He laughs at her suggestion, it's the first time he's really smiled all day since hearing his dad was going to jail. "I wonder if he'll ever think what he did is worth it?"

Thinking about it for a second she lifts her shoulders in a shrug. "That's something only he can figure out."

"You got the job?" she asks excitedly, clapping her hands together in congratulations.

Jughead just shows her his new uniform shirt for the Bijou. "I have to wear a uniform, Betty. A uniform!"

Her lower lip pouts out dramatically as she tells him, "You poor baby. And to think, it took sixteen years but The Man finally took down the great Jughead Jones."

"Taxes, Betty! I have to pay taxes! This is how they get you."

"Welcome to America, Jug. Now shut your mouth, smile, and hand the government all your money."

"Aw, baby, I've taught you so well," he says sweetly, pulling her into a kiss as he tosses his new uniform shirt on the floor.

Pushing at him, she tells him, "You do know the Twilight paying you under the table was illegal, right?"

He just winks at her and laughing, they fall onto her bed.

"Is that motorcycle back, Jughead?"

He smiles brightly at her. "Yeah, my dad said I could have it, especially since he'll be gone for months."

"If I so much as hear a whisper you were on that thing without a helmet so help me-"

"Look!" he interrupts loudly, handing her a bag.

Pulling open the bag she stares into the bag apprehensively. "This is a helmet."

"Yes it is."

"It's pink."

"Also true."

Lifting her head with a gleam in her eye she smiles at him. "I didn't know you were changing your aesthetic, Jug. I'm not sure pastels are good with your skin tone but-"

"You know damn well it's for you, Betty. Now put it on, I'm going to take you to the river to fulfill one of fourteen year old Jughead's fantasies."

Junior Year

"Semantics, Archibald!" Veronica yells loudly, slamming the door as she leaves.

Running after her, Archie is shouting, "Wait, no. Not semantics, Veronica!"

Jughead leans over towards a shocked Betty. "Is it wrong that I'm proud of him for knowing what semantics means?"

"Maybe? Yes? No. But only because I am, too."

"Do you know what happened?" he asks, sitting at his desk in the Blue and Gold.

Walking over to grab the papers off of her desk she nods. "Yeah, some girl kissed him."

"Wait. A girl kissed him? Did he kiss her back?"

Shaking her head, she tells him, "I'm pretty sure he didn't. They've been together for a year now, he wouldn't cheat on Veronica."

Stretching his hands above his head and yawning he relaxes back into his chair. "Then why is she so mad?"

"He didn't tell her about it right away."

"Oh."

"Yeah."

He sighs. "Oh, Archie."

"Come on, Jug. I know you don't want to but if you want to get into college you're going to have to at least try and study."

Throwing his pen down on the table, he scoffs at the books surrounding him. "Or, and hear me out, we could play Strip Studying as an incentive for me to learn?" At her unamused face he just keeps trying. "No? Okay, how about every time you find a semicolon I shouldn't have used, you take off some clothes?"

"Jughead."

"Betty. Betts. Light of my life. I just think if I could, say, focus on your gloriousness while learning obscure bullshit that won't matter past the SATs then I might absorb more of it," he pleads with her.

"Won't matter?"

"Yes! None of this is going to be important. If they really cared before they sent us out into the world, they'd teach us how to do taxes-"

Betty starts laughing at his indignation. "Are you really still mad you had to file taxes?"

"I still feel dirty, Betty."

"You what?"

She sounds a little nervous as she repeats it to him. "I went on birth control."

"I don't understand."

Rolling her eyes at him she tightens her legs around his hips. "It means you don't have to use that," she says, pointing at the condom in his hand.

Jughead thinks he swallows his tongue as he tries to get the words out. "What? Like, right now? I can just…?"

"Yeah, Jug, you can just-"

She stops talking as he slides into her with a moan. "Oh fuck. And to think people still think Eden is myth when I've found it. Fuck me, Betty, if this is how I die just know that it was worth it."

Senior Year

"You, Jughead Jones, can go right ahead and fuck yourself," Betty tells him right before stalking out of the room.

"What did you do? Did Betty just say fuck? What is happening?" Archie is asking him while the world is buzzing around his ears, making him dizzy.

Lost in his thoughts the only thing he can think to say is, "Betty's said fuck before, Arch."

Archie looks confused. "When?"

"Usually when we're-"

"No! Never tell me that!"

Jughead slumps into the sofa that's still in Archie's garage. "She's pissed, man. Like, really pissed."

"What happened?"

"I told her I didn't want to use any of her Blossom inheritance to pay for my college tuition, that I didn't want her charity."

"Ouch."

"Yeah."

"Veronica is supposed to help me babysit the twins for Polly and Jason, not you," his girlfriend tells him angrily, trying to shut the door in his face.

Wincing at the pain from sticking his foot in the doorway he starts begging. "Betty, please, listen to me."

"Oh I'm sorry, I didn't realize it's only charity when it's money and not my time."

Cringing at her tone he tries again. "That money is for you. It's yours to start your life."

She swings around to stare at him with eyes rapidly filling with tears. "I thought we were starting our lives. I didn't realize you wanted to start one without me."

Before what she's said hits him completely, he hears her running up the stairs and the slam of her bedroom door. Running after her, he throws the door open to see her sitting on her bed, face red from crying.

Jughead walks over to her, trying to take her hands in his but she won't let him. His heart drops as he realizes what that probably means. "Give me your hands, Betty."

She glares at him. "Feel free to leave."

Taking a deep breath, he reaches for her hands. "Betty."

At his tone she huffs and holds her hands out. He can see the red imprints and slight smears of blood. The sting of tears starts to hit until it feels like a rock in his throat. "Jesus, baby," he whispers to her, kissing each palm before taking her into his arms.

Sobbing, she's shaking and trying to push him away. Holding her tighter he starts talking now that she can't run away. He tells her that's not what he meant, that the money was for her college, he can figure something out, he never wants her to want for anything, he loves her so much doesn't she know that? Where she goes, he goes.

Later, when they're lying in her bed, cried out and exhausted she asks him, "Where I go you go?"

Kissing her temple, he sighs into her hair. "You just wait."

"Like glitter?"

"Glitter?"

"Yeah, you know, it's always seems like a good idea until you realize you're never getting rid of it."

He laughs at that. "Sure, like glitter then." A moment later he asks, "Who the hell thinks glitter is a good idea?"

"Betty!"

"What?"

Out of breath by the time he reaches her, he bends over to catch his breath, stretching his arm out, handing her the paper in it.

Her eyes get big as she reads it. "Is this for real?"

Standing he nods at her, the smile on his face big as he grabs her and swings her in a circle as they laugh.

September 2017

"So you'll do it?"

"Do we have a deal?"

"Yes, yes. You get this done and when the time comes, your tragic backstory of a son gets a "scholarship" for whatever pathetic school will take him."

"Just so we're clear, you want me to get someone to set fire to the Twilight?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"It's personal."

"Fine. I'll make sure it's done but it's gonna have to wait until my boy finds somewhere else to stay."

"I don't care when you do it as long as it creates a problem for Hiram Lodge."

"It'll be done."

The Last Summer In Riverdale

"You ever wonder what the Blossoms got out of buying back the Twilight land and hiring my dad to restore it back to the drive in?" Archie asks as they're waiting for the movie to start.

"It was their family land before, Arch. Maybe they just wanted it back the way it was, when it was great."

"They could be just trying to be charitable, Archiekins. Have the Blossoms ever offered a scholarship before this year?" Veronica asks, leaning over Betty to grab the popcorn from Jughead's hands.

Glaring at her, Jughead reluctantly hands it over. "Not that I know of but who knows? I didn't know about most of those grants or scholarships until I started applying for them."

"Maybe with Clifford Blossom gone, they're trying to change their drug dealing, maple mafia image? They did help my parents buy back their paper," Betty says, taking the popcorn back to hand back to him.

Smiling at her while Veronica glares at him, he grabs a handful. "Who knows what they're getting out of it?"

"You know I think you should do, Jug? Write a novel about all of it, what happened here in Riverdale; the corruption of small town America."

College

"I'm exhausted, Juggie."

"Oh god, Betty. Me too."

"Want to take a nap?"

"Yes. Fuck yes."

And So It Ends

"What are you doing?" he can hear Betty ask sleepily as he trails kisses down over the skin of her stomach and over her hips. "Jug, today is-"

He smirks into her skin as she loses her train of thought and moans while reaching to grab a handful of the sheet beneath her. When her hips jerk up at the first pass of his tongue across the the crease of her thigh, he uses the palm of his hand to hold her down on the bed.

"What did we talk about, Betty?"

Her legs are restless as she tries to concentrate on what he's saying. "Uhm, about staying still?"

"Yes, what are you supposed to do?"

"Not move."

He traces small circles from her abdomen down and over her hip bones. "And what are you doing?"

"Having an involuntary bodily response-"

The soft smacking sound of his hand lightly coming down against the skin of her inner thigh jolts her out of her sarcastic answer. They both know it's what she was going for.

"How many times are we going to go over this, Elizabeth?"

Betty tries to pull her knees up as she arches her back against the mattress. "I dunno."

Pushing her knees back down and apart he lightly runs a finger down and over her until it just barely brushes over her clit. He's smiling at the sound that suspiciously sounds like a whine when he schools his face. "Is that an appropriate answer?"

"It could be," she tells him, looking at him through her lashes.

The sound of another soft smack against her thigh sounds out into their bedroom that's quickly followed by another moan.

His tone is firm when he says, "Elizabeth."

Getting her full attention she gives him the big eyes that mean she's trying to butter him up.

"Don't you give me those, eyes. I'm immune," he insists, knowing damn well he is absolutely not immune.

Betty sighs out, half a groan and half an acceptance. "Fine. I'll behave."

Seriously doubting that but taking advantage of her amenable state, he tells her, "Get up here."

Still moving in her partially sleepy state she's a little wobbly as she gets to her knees, hair a tangled mess and tired eyes and he's never quite gotten over how beautiful she is. Pulling her back against his chest, moving her legs to the outside of his as he helps her slide down onto him he wraps one around her stomach, holding her to him as they move together while the palm of his other hand comes up to push against the base of her throat with a firm but gentle pressure.

Betty's hands move to hold onto his arm as he applies a little more pressure as he keeps her in place while he thrusts into her from behind.

The little panting moans slipping out of her mouth as her head falls back slightly to where he can see her mouth open and her eyes fluttering is going to drive him crazy. After a soft nip at her earlobe with his teeth he whispers, "Touch yourself."

Immediately he can feel her right hand move down and start circling her clit as he moves faster. The sound of skin on skin and the increasing volume of moaning in the quiet of the room sends them both over the edge, Jughead tightening his hand against her throat to make her come louder and harder. Slowing his pace to help them both cool and calm down he smiles into her hair as she huffs out a slurred, "I love you, Juggie."

Falling to the bed together he pulls her into his arms until her head is resting on his chest when he tells her, "Always?"

She laughs at him. "How about forever?"

September 2006

"Well boys, how was your first day of kindergarten?" Mrs. Andrews asks him and Archie.

Archie is bouncing on his feet as he tells his mom everything they did that day, including the chocolate milk that made everything about school a little bit better.

As he's talking quickly, Jughead is sitting quietly until he hears Archie say, "And Jug met Betty, Mom!"

Mrs. Andrews looks over at him with a soft smile. "You did? What did you think of her, Jughead?"

Shrugging as he sticks his hand under his hat, pulling out the cookie Betty had given him earlier that day at lunch while telling him to put it somewhere safe so he could have it later, he takes a bite of it as he replies, "I think I'm going to marry her one day."

And So It Begins

They're almost late to his book signing thanks to him but he'll never admit it. This isn't the first one and it's not going to be the last. It's always something that sends him into a state of awe and he hopes he never loses that feeling. Reading to the crowd, answering their questions, it feels invasive to him but he's learning to deal with the attention. Sometimes. As Betty tells him, it's the price he's paying for success and while he knows it's true, he sometimes misses the anonymity of just being the lucky bastard who landed the blonde who was way out of his league.

He's still that guy, he guesses. The only difference is now he has to talk about it to total strangers on a regular basis.

Life could be worse, he thinks as he starts another reading to another full crowd before starting the question and answer portion of the signing.

"Is it true you've been with your wife since you were fifteen?" one person wants to know.

Smiling, he looks to the back of the crowd where he knows she's standing, trying not to draw attention to herself. "That's true."

"And no regrets?"

Raising an eyebrow at the audacity of the question he just shrugs as he leans back into the chair, crossing his arms. "Yeah, just one."

"What's that?"

"That I wasn't with her since the day I met her," he answers, meeting her eye again as she shakes her head at him in amusement. Hearing a loud laugh to the side of him he looks over. "You want to add something, Archie?"

"Nope, I'm good."

Someone else yells out, "When did you meet her?"

Jughead smiles widely. "The first day of kindergarten-"

"Seriously?" a voice calls out from the crowd.

"-and I still can't believe I missed out on ten years of kissing her."

For My Beloved

I read somewhere once that you can fall in love with someone in four minutes. And while I'm not sure how true that is, I think I've been falling in love with you every four minutes since the day we met and I'll keep doing it until I die and even then, I'm sure it won't have been enough.

And it was always going to be you, Elizabeth, because in the simplest words I can think of; I can't fall in love without you.

Our story is about a town, a small town, and the people who live in the town.

From a distance, it presents itself like so many other small towns all over the world Safe. Decent. Innocent. Get closer, though, and you start seeing the shadows underneath. The name of our town is Riverdale.