Here When It Counts

Chapter 1

She felt alone.

She had just gotten home from staking out yet another truck stop in search for some answers. Answers that never seemed to come. To make matters worse, her former investigation partner had mysteriously disappeared. She wondered if it was somehow connected to Polly and the other missing girls. Tabitha was convinced otherwise, but Betty knew just how connected the mysteries in Riverdale seemed to always be.

She had still yet to process all the craziness that happened in the past few days. Her mother was close to breaking after what happened with Charles. And she was worried that the twins might be on a path that they can never come back from. And worst of all, TBK's return was haunting her more than she would care to admit.

She wants to talk to someone, but she doesn't have many options at the moment. Jughead is missing. Her family is at their breaking point. She hasn't really talked to Veronica much since returning to town. And Kevin was busy trying to fix the destruction left at the school. She has tried talking to Kevin to see if he wanted to continue helping with the case. But, when she found out that he was working closely with Archie on school repairs, she dropped it.

Archie.

He was the person she wanted to talk to most. He had promised to be there for her. But, things haven't been the same since they "ended" things. She's barely seen him, let alone talked to him since. Although, she hasn't gone out of her way to reach out to him. She spends enough of her time pretending already, she isn't sure if she can be around him and pretend things aren't different.

He's probably busy with Veronica anyways.

She plops on her bed, not bothering to change her clothes. As her eyes start to flutter closed, she wishes for a dreamless sleep. But, wishes have never came true for her.

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She wakes up with a start.

Her heart is pounding. Tears are running down her face and the faint taste of bile has covered her throat. She tries to take deep breathes to calm her impeding panic attack.

The nightmares have gotten worse since she found out TBK was killing again. This time, she saw her sister's dismembered body scattered across her bedroom floor. Some parts in trash bags, others left like they had just been cut off. Her sister's head looked at her dead in the eye, yelling at her.

"You did this," she screamed, "you couldn't save me!!"

She didn't have much time to argue with that because before she knew it, TBK was dragging her by her hair out of the room and putting a bullet between her eyes.

She didn't even realize that she picked up her phone until her thumb is hovering over a familiar contact. She stops herself. He probably isn't even awake.

She debates getting up and peeking out her closed blinds to see if his light was. If his light was on, would he even answer her call? She knows he would. He would probably drop whatever he was doing to check on her. That isn't the problem.

The problem is she doesn't want him to. She doesn't want him to come over with those big brown eyes and ask her what's wrong. He can't make her forget anymore. Him coming over would mean she would have to talk about it. She isn't ready to talk about it. Especially not with him.

The another problem is that she does want to talk to him. She wants to spill everything to him. But if she does, she doesn't think she could handle how he would take it. He would look at her with pity. She gets enough of those looks already. It would change how he sees her. She would no longer be seen as just his childhood best friend. She'd be seen as the broken and damaged goods she is.