Mine (a Riverdale fanfiction)

Who He Could Really Be

Jughead joined the Serpents for lunch outside today, finding them bent over some kind of plans.

"Nice article your girlfriend's mom wrote," Sweetpea said as he approached.

The article had, not surprisingly, blamed most of Riverdale's unrest on the South Side, and the Serpents. "Yeah. I saw that. Dilton Doily said he was stabbed when a bunch of you guys jumped him?"

"Yeah, the idiot stabbed himself. With his own knife."

"And we didn't jump him. There was a fight: Bulldogs versus Serpents. And you see this?" Sweetpea pointed to a massive shiner over his eye. "Your boy Andrews gave it to me. Just before his girlfriend shot a gun into the air."

That was all news to Jughead. "What happened?"

"And, of course, Northsiders get off scot-free, while the rest of us are hauled in by the police."

"It's payback time."

"What are you guys talking about?" Jughead came closer, looking at the plans more carefully. "What is—what is that? Is that a pipe bomb?"

"Foley's cousin served in the Army, he's gonna build us something."

"We'll do it after hours, but it'll shut the Riverdale Register down once and for all."

Jughead couldn't believe what he was hearing. "You think blowing up a building is going to make things better?"

"Can't get any worse."

"Yeah, Sweetpea, it can." They stared at each other a moment before Jughead sighed in frustration. "Let me talk to Archie, let me figure this out. Okay?"

"Man, that's your answer for everything: talk and more talk! And we don't even know who you stand with. Us—or them."

There it was. The decision laid out before him, the one he had been hoping to avoid all this time. Who was he? His father's son, Archie's friend, Betty's boyfriend—or some strange mixture of the three who didn't truly belong anywhere?

Sweetpea leaned on the table, looking at Jughead intensely. "You can't be half a Serpent."

No. No, he supposed he couldn't. But could he be a whole Serpent? Or none at all? They seemed equally impossible choices.

At home, in his father's trailer, he stood staring at the jacket, torn between the various parts of himself. But—he owed his dad. And, more than that, he wanted to understand where his father had come from, who he had become, why he had been the leader of the Serpents. And how the Serpents and the North Side could be brought together to keep Riverdale from coming apart. He was uniquely qualified to do that. So he would try. He had to.

Deciding at last, he put the jacket on and went to the White Wyrm, where Sweetpea sneered at him. "I think this Northsider is lost."

"I'm not. I'm over being half a Serpent."

"Wow. You would do anything to protect your North Side buddies," Sweetpea said, pushing past him so that Jughead staggered backward.

"My father was a Serpent," Jughead reminded him. Reminded them all. "He led you. I want to stand with you guys." He looked around, seeing no response, just silence. But that was a response in itself, so he continued in the face of it. "Tall Boy was the one who gave me this jacket. It's finally time I start wearing it."

Tall Boy came toward him, his face set and impassive. "So. Now you want to be a Serpent, huh? Let's see if you survive the initiation first."

Jughead had no choice but to accept that. He had thrown down the gauntlet; they were accepting his challenge.