"Betty?" Abby slowed her pace when she saw Betty leaning against her locker.
"Hey, Abby." She tightens the grip on her backpack straps.
"So, what do you need?" She opened her locker.
"What… what makes you think I want something?" She tilts her head.
"Your whole stance screams awkward." She chuckled.
"I guess it does." She shook out her arms. She didn't realize how stiff she was making her limbs. "I do need a favor."
"Name it. After freeing Fangs, I owe you a big one." She grabbed the textbooks she would need to take home.
"I am suspicious about my brother." She told her.
"The FBI agent?" She closed the door to lean against it.
"Yes, that one. I think he might be a killer." She nods.
"Who did he kill?" She wonders.
"He was roommates and maybe more with Chic. During that time someone died in that apartment. At first, I thought the killer was Chic but Charles is the one that ran away." She explains.
"Okay, but where do I come in?" She wondered where this was going.
"The only other person there that night was Chic. He told me he would only see me if you visited him first." Betty saw the hesitation on Abby's face. "This would make us even, I swear."
"I keep thinking Chic and all that mess is behind me, but it keeps coming back up." She sighs.
"Trust me, I know the feeling." Betty gave a small smile.
Sweet Pea was in charge of the center at the moment. Abby is going to see Chic as a favor to Betty. He was annoyed about it. He kept telling her, she didn't owe Betty anything. She was freeing her mother and sister, not Fangs. But, Abby kept insisting that she would feel bad if she didn't do this simple favor for Betty. Since Betty put her life on the line and all she's doing is talking to a person through a thick piece of glass.
"Dude, you look like a ticking time bomb. You're going to scare off the little kids." Fangs put a hand on his shoulder to squeeze it. Only the children in elementary school were coming to the center. Dodge was paying with pizza and arcade tokens, so the older kids were running to him. Archie was talking to Eddie and Toby to see how they could get them back.
"Sorry, I can't stop thinking about Abby." He clenched his fists.
"I'm worried too. You have to remember there is going to be bulletproof glass between them. He's not going to be able to touch her. Guards will be watching them." He kept reminding himself of those facts.
"Everyone keeps bringing up her physical but what about her mental? She takes the blame for everything. She blames herself for Chic staying in Riverdale, and ultimately for the lives he took while being here. That's why it's so hard for her to throw away his letter and reject the phone calls." He whispered since Nancy was reading a story to the kids on the bleachers.
"I agree with Sweets on this one." Greg joined them. "I'm not even sure she's physically safe. Chic could be setting up a trap for the Gargoyles to snatch her. I set Kraken to stand guard at the front door."
"There's some peace of mind." Fangs squeezed his shoulder.
"Sweets Pea! Sweet Pea!" Glenn and Benn Feebly, 5-year-old twins who played the bass fiddle, came running over to him. "Where's our girlfriend?" They had a crush on Abby and didn't bother trying to hide it.
Sweets grit his teeth. "My girlfriend had a doctor's appointment so she won't be in today."
"Oh, we were hoping to take her out on a date." Benn pouts. Fangs laughed at his friend's face. You could almost see the angry mark appearing on his forehead like in an anime.
"Are you okay?" Betty asked.
"Yeah, I'm fine. It's not like he can reach out and grab me." She let out a deep breath to calm her nerves before walking into the visitation room. She walked along the glass until she saw Chic. He looked like he did the first time she ever saw him. He was blonde and had pink pigment back into his skin. His eyes had the mischievous twinkle instead of that dangerous predator gaze they had the night he was Jason. She didn't realize she was staring until he pointed at the chair. She sat down and picked up the phone. "Hello."
"Hey!" He smirks.
"You look better than the last time I saw you." She was relieved that he looked like Chic and not Jason.
"Yeah, I look good in orange." He nods.
She laughed at that. "Are you okay?"
"Don't do that. I promised myself I wouldn't get sucked back into you." He shook my head.
"Sucked back into me?" She asked.
"I've been thinking while I'm in here and realize why you attract so many dark souls. It's because you don't have any boundaries. It's not that you understand me, you were taught to not hurt anyone's feelings, so you pretend to get it. In that way, your caring isn't real either." He was going on when she cut him off.
She could accept the boundaries issue because she was working on that in therapy but she would not let him say she didn't care. "I care, just because it wasn't on the imitate level that you wanted doesn't mean that I'm an evil person."
"You don't think it's sinister to do what you do. You don't set boundaries so people can believe maybe it could be more. They gain feelings for you then when they express it you crush them. It sucks to realize how many people you did this to. Fangs, Greg, Kurtz, Ben…" He was listing names.
"The Gargoyles that died are on you, not me. Ben… Ben was so…" She tears up thinking of his eyes.
"Evelyn said he was a sore subject for you but this is too much." He didn't like seeing her torn up over that nobody. "I'm locked up because of my effort to be with you and you're crying over a boy you didn't know." He yelled and slammed his hand on the glass. A guard called out a warning. He slowly took his hand off the glass without breaking eye contact with her.
"You're talking to Evelyn. She shouldn't be allowed with the general public. That damn cult leader." She looked him over. "You're not buying into her shit, are you?" She thinks the combo of Evelyn and Chic could be dangerous.
"Are you jealous?" He taps the glass like he was taping her nose.
"I'm concerned for the other prisoners and staff here." She scoffs. "What the point of this, Chic? I'm getting mixed signals. Did you want me to come so that you can get closer? Or are you trying to open up the line of communication?"
"I want you to acknowledge what you did to me." He pointed at his chest.
"I did not make you be the Gargoyle King. I didn't make you pretend to be Charles or Jason. You made those decisions." She shook her head even though she had those thoughts herself. She was repeating what the therapist told her.
"I was planning on getting everything I could from the Cooper then ditching in the middle of the night. Then I ran into you, you made me believe things could be different. You made me feel seen in a way I never have before. You let me lean on you, just to leave me stranded. And still, I wanted to make you a goddess when you didn't even ask around about me." Penelope always brought that up. His stare was icy and going right through her. "I want you to acknowledge what you are. You're not the sweet girl next door. You're dangerous. You're cruel. You experiment with people's lives so you don't have to focus on the ugly parts of yourself. You find a lost soul and try to steer them to what your version of good is and when they exceed and are obedient dogs you keep them around like Kraken but when they fail like me and have thoughts of their own you cast them aside." He thought she must have an extreme kink of turning bad guys good.
"If that's what you need to make it bearable here then fine. I'm dangerous and cruel. But, know this, the only one that ever failed was you. You belong here, you crazy psycho murderer with any luck to the outside world you'll be in here until you die." She sneers.
"That's my girl. I wanted to see this side of you, the real you. Not the polite girl that her daddy raised but the stern mistress underneath it all." His smile spread across his whole face and his eyes were beaming.
Abby dropped the phone and stood up to walk out of the room. When the door closed behind her, she let the tears run down her face. She had lost control. She was so angry that Chic was able to say every insecure thought she had in her head. It made it all too real for her. "Abby?" Betty reached out to touch her but before she could make contact she took off running. "Abby!"
"Ma'am if you want to do your visit you gotta do it now, visiting will be over soon." A guard told her.
She looked down the hall to not see Abby anymore and let out a sigh. "I'm coming."
"Hey Kraken, what's up?" Sweet Pea answered the call.
"We got a fuck up over here." He sighs.
"What?" He hurried into the office with Greg on his heels.
"Put it on speaker," Greg demands. Sweets glared at him for the order but did as he asked. "What's going on?"
"Betty walks out alone. I asked her where Abby was. She said her talk with Chic ended like an hour ago. She ran out of the visiting room crying. But, she never came out the front door." He explains to them.
"Betty let her run out of the room like that." Greg was going to put up a big argument the next time a favor from Betty came up.
"We can curse her out later. How is it possible that she never came out?" Sweets wanted her in front of him before he thought about anything else.
"I paid a guard to look at the tapes and she ran out the employee's back door and she went straight into the woods. I need Dracula to get here ASAP. He knows how to track people." He had watched the film himself. "She had her hands over her face when she ran into the woods. I'm scared she ran into a tree or something and hurt herself."
"Only the little kids are here so we'll take everyone that does the boxing training and go look for her." Sweets hoped she didn't run into any hunting traps.
The guys had spent all day searching to come up empty. Sweets had sent all the guys back to the center, Archie was holding an arcade night and he would need their manpower. Dracula had to carry Greg to the car. He was hoping he was right as he pushed his way through the two boulders and climbed up the old tree to his childhood memories. He felt a giant weight get lifted off his chest when he saw her sitting in the corner. She was covered in mud and her clothes were ripped in certain places. She was rocking in place crying into her knees. But, at least he had found her. "Abby? Baby, what happened? What did that bastard say?"
She lifted her head to look at him with swollen eyes. "I'm sorry. I must have worried you." It made his heart clench.
"It's okay, just tell me what happened so we can work through it." He pulled her into a hug.
"He kept saying every insecure thought I had in my head. There is truth to it, I know there is. It made me snap. I told him I hoped he died there. I have a darkness in me that I'm constantly feeding even though I pretend to be some beacon of light." She thought of what everyone thought of her. They made her out to be a saint with a pure heart. She knew she was supposed to keep her head high in the hardness of time but she was crumbling.
"I know you were brought up to be perfect. That you must always do the right thing and keep your moral code squeaky clean. In the face of assholes, you're supposed to take the high road. But, all that is some fairytale bullshit. Sometimes you gotta do what you have to, to protect yourself and your loved ones and that's okay. It doesn't make you a bad person. Do you think I'm a bad person for beating up all those Ghoulies, Gargoyles, and even Bulldogs?"
"You know I don't." She shook her head.
"I wish you would treat yourself the same way you treat me and all your friends. I wish you would give yourself forgiveness, love, and respect." He rubs her back.
"Do you think I go around trying to help people because I don't know how to help myself?" She hears Edgar asking, why do you consume yourself with other people's lives? "Fangs, Edgar, Kurtz, Mrs. Moore, Chic… they can all see that something is wrong. I know you can too. Is Greg, Nancy, Dracula, Kraken friends with me because they want to be or that they feel indebted to me or dependent on me?"
"I think you like helping others because you know what it's like to feel helpless and alone. You don't want anyone to feel that way. All those people you just named are worried sick about you." He looks over the scratches she had on her arms from branches scraping her while she ran blindly. "Chic only said those things because he was trying to guilt you into talking to him again. Come on, let's go clean you up and get some sleep." He nudged her towards the exit.
"But, the arcade night." She remembers the text she got from Archie.
"They can handle that themselves. I think you deserve a night of relaxation. You've been there every night since it opened." He went down first and helped her down the last few steps. "I can't believe you walk from the prison." They went through the boulders.
"Honestly, I didn't mean to. I was running blindly until my feet were screaming. I was walking to try and find the way out and I came across the boulders and decided to hide from the world. I wasn't ready to show my face." She didn't want to explain the awful things that Chic said.
"Don't worry about it. I'll text everyone and let them know not to ask any questions." He grabbed her hand.
Abby was lying on Sweet Pea's chest listening to his heartbeat. She was thankful for having him in her life. He seems to know what to do to get her out of her dark space. Their peace was ruined when Archie's scream could be heard from downstairs. "We got to go! We have to go now!"
"What the fuck!" Sweet Pea groans, ready to kill the loud noise. They never got a chance to see what he was yelling about. The sound of gunshots went off. He grabbed Abby and rolled them off his side of the bed that was closest to the door to use the mattress like a shield. "Shit!" He held her tightly. It seemed like the shots were going to last forever when finally they stopped and the sound of an engine roaring echoed through the street.
"Thank god Tessie is sleeping over at the Tent Village with Fangs." She put a hand over her heart when she realized they were okay. "Oh my god, Mom and Archie." She got up to run downstairs with Sweet Pea at her heels.
"Is everyone alright?" He asked.
"Yeah, we're okay." Archie helps their mom get off the floors.
"Who the hell was that?" Mrs. Andrews looks at her son. "You knew after answering the door. What's going on Archie?"
"I've been doing vigilant acts at night again." He held up the black hood.
"Why Archie?" She stares at her son in shock.
"I was sick of Dodge and his crew getting away with everything. The police aren't doing anything." He threw the hood down on the ground.
"Leave it alone. Men like this have no limits." She went upstairs. Archie hung his head while going into the garage.
"You know how you said sometimes you do what you have to." Abby looks at Sweets.
"Are you suggesting what I think you are?" He smiled.
"We need to take Dodger off the board." She couldn't have someone this dangerous working against them running free.
"We'll do it tomorrow night. You have to make sure everyone stays in the house." He could feel the adrenaline getting ready to run through his veins.
"I can manage that." She agrees.
After everyone went to sleep, the Serpents drove to Dodger's hideout. He was by himself. His boys were probably out threatening children. The guys got into their watch-out points in case any of his goonies came. Sweets walks into the chop shop. "Oh, so Red sent his goons." He let out a laugh.
"No, he didn't. You shot up my girl's house so I'm going to need to do some damage." He walks closer to him. Dodger swings a tire iron. Sweet Pea dodged the hit, grabbed the weapon, and ripped it out of his hands. He swung it to slam it into his ribs. After he fell on the floor, he kept stomping on him even after Dodger wasn't moving.
"Sweets, we're getting unexpected company," Dracula called in.
Sweet looks down at the bleeding unmoving guy. He walks out to see Hiram Lodge. "I'm sorry to say but any business you got with Dodger's is going to have to wait for a while, if ever."
"Huh?" He walks in to see the broken man on the floor. "I'm impressed. You're a man who does what needs to be done."
Sweet didn't like being praised by the man. "Well, my daughter could have been in that house. My girl and her family were."
"Let me take care of the clean up. I like what you guys are doing for the kids in the community." He looked around the place and spotted a rug.
"Sure, you want some of the guys to help you with that." Sweet needs to get back home before the family wakes up.
"None, I got this." He didn't need help from the young guns. They nod in respect before leaving him to do it.