Jughead looked at the girl who was splayed across his lap, passed out from the pressure pinch Sweet Pea had given her. They knew there was a chance she wasn't going to come with them willingly - a big chance - and Jughead hated to think about the fact that they were technically kidnapping her. True, their intentions were pure, but it didn't ease the sting of the bite any less. He rested his hands on her back, making sure the blanket he put around her was pulled up high.
She had to be exhausted. Betty had been living with Alice for eleven years and doing god-knows-what. He knew that Alice had used Betty for money but it was disgusting to think how low she would sink to make that money. Betty had been used as a prostitute in her own home and Jughead knew that they had to get her tested.
How she knew the Serpents was easy. She had grown up with them. Alice had been married to Hal and Betty had run around with the Serpents as a little girl. But then, something broke in Alice and she had taken her away from the only life she had known, thrusting her into a more brutal one than any of them could have ever anticipated.
Jughead looked at Sweet Pea, who was sitting across from him while Joaquin drove. The taller one had a furrowed brow, staring down at Betty in something akin to tender sympathy. They couldn't - not one of them - imagine how hard the last eleven years had been on her. And, Jughead could feel her bones protruding from different places on her body. He knew that there was a chance she'd be thinner than was for comfort, but he didn't know it would be this bad.
"What are we going to tell Hal?" Sweet Pea asked quietly. Jughead didn't have the answer for that. He wasn't sure what the hell they were going to tell him. "Hi, Hal, we found your daughter. She's shockingly thin and was forced to have sleep with men twice her age"? He wanted to snort because he could imagine Hal's response to that.
Jughead pitied Alice Smith when Hal caught up to her. But then again, she was the reason Betty was in this mess in the first place. He didn't necessarily pity her all that much the more he thought about it.
Just then, they hit a speed bump, jolting Betty awake, and he kept a loose but cautious grip on her. She opened her eyes, looking around the van, before pummeling Jughead. "Take - me - back!"
He had expected this to an extent and used his own fingers as manacles around her wrists. He held her in place, shushing her gently. She stopped fighting and collapsed against his chest, energy spent. She didn't have that much to begin with. "Shh, Betty. You're safe."
"I need to get back to my mothe- Alice! I need to get back to Alice!" Betty exclaimed, struggling against Jughead's iron-like grip. Sweet Pea crossed over to them just then, sitting down next to Betty.
"Betts," he murmured, voice hoarse as he stared at her. "You didn't deserve any of that. You don't owe Alice a damn thing."
"I don't even know you," she hissed, tears leaking out of the corner of her eyes and falling onto Jughead's fingers, hot and thick. This was something they had wondered about. If Betty would remember Sweet Pea. Jughead had been in Toledo when they were kids, helping his mother sober up, so he had never seen her. But he had heard stories from Hal, FP, and the rest of the Serpents. Betty Cooper was a light in their life, and that light had been snuffed out the moment Alice took her. "You know him, Betty. I promise you, you do."
Betty stared at him, green irises wet with tears. "What I know is there will be hell to pay when Alice catches up to us. And mark my words, she will catch up to us."
Sweet Pea rubbed tender circles into Betty's palm. "We're prepared for that to happen. We just need you to trust us. Trust me."
Betty looked at him, taking in his sincerity, and Jughead watched her. Her eyes were guarded, holding an ancient truth about all the shit she had been through. He knew that, if given the choice, she probably wouldn't stay with Alice. But she was too scared to live a life for herself, and he couldn't blame her. Not when all she knew was rules and fists at Alice's disposal. He had seen the handprint half-concealed by a concealer. He knew what to look for because FP had prepared him to look for it. "Okay."
It was a quiet whisper; a quiet admittance at acceptance, and Jughead was so relieved she wasn't fighting them. He loosened his grip on her wrists, letting her have more room to move, and she placed her hands in her lap, staring out of the window. "Are there men I'll sleep with there?"
Jughead's heart. It hurt. Sharing a devastated look with Sweet Pea, Jughead took over. "No, Betty. Not one of us are going to do that to you. We're here to get you to safety and help."
"Safety and help," she murmured lowly. "I haven't had those two things in so long, I'm not sure I know what they look like."
Sweet Pea hesitantly pulled her into a hug, a tear cresting down the side of his face as Jughead watched on. "I promise, Betts, we'll get it fixed. We'll get it all fixed, okay? You just have to trust yourself."
That was better than Sweet Pea asking her to trust them, Jughead thought. There was no way Jughead thought she'd trust them, not now, but he hoped for the future to look better. And Betty nodded, eyes red-rimmed. "I can do that."
Her voice was nothing more than a whisper and Jughead knew that it was about to get a whole hell of a lot harder than it had ever been before.