Mine (a Riverdale fanfiction)

Your True Self

Nursing his bruises, Jughead sat with Toni in his trailer, relieved that the ordeal was over. He was a Serpent now, and nothing would ever be able to change that.

She seemed relieved as well. "Welcome to the Serpents. Officially," she added, glancing at the fresh tattoo on his shoulder. "You're going to have a hard time hiding that from Betty."

Betty. He hadn't thought about her in hours—one nice thing about having been beaten within an inch of his life. It had proved quite distracting. "I think that's a non-issue now," he told Toni, keeping his voice even with less effort than he'd expected. Somehow he had always known that sooner or later Betty would realize how different they were. It had been a fantasy, and now he was awake.

Toni looked at him, and he recognized at last something in her eyes that he had seen there before but had never been willing to admit to himself. He wasn't surprised when she leaned forward and kissed him, and was even less surprised that he let her.

*****

Betty sat miserably in Veronica's bedroom, listening to the story of how Cheryl had nearly been date-raped by Veronica's old friend Nick, and cursed the Black Hood, and her own desperate need to reach him, to find him herself. If she hadn't listened to him and cut ties between herself and her friends, she might have been there to stop Nick, to keep Cheryl from leaving Veronica's party with him.

But she had allowed the Black Hood to come between her and everyone else in her life, and that wasn't so easily undone as she might have wished. She left Veronica's house alone, walking home through the misty night, missing Jughead, missing Veronica ... missing herself.

In her room, that horrid jaunty ringtone split the silence again. She wanted to let it ring. She wanted to throw it out the window, to stop being a puppet, but ... she couldn't. She needed to know who he was, why he felt so familiar, why—what could keep the darkness inside her from breaking her, the way the darkness inside him had broken him. She picked up the phone. "I wasn't sure if you were going to call again."

"There's one piece of unfinished business."

"What's that?"

"The fact that you've been telling Archie about our chats."

A cold chill stabbed straight through her. She should have known the Black Hood would find out. She had put Archie in danger. And without Archie, what did she have left? Nothing.

The Black Hood continued, somewhat redundantly, "Betty, I've been watching you."

"You never said I couldn't tell Archie."

"You broke the rules, Betty. And now your sister will pay."

Panic filled her. Not Polly. She couldn't let him go after Polly. "Please don't hurt her." She meant it to be a plea, but it came out as more of an order.

"Then give me another name. Right now."

"What?"

"If you want to save your sister, give me another name—the name of someone guilty. Come on, Betty. One little name."

And be a murderer, as bad as he was? No. She couldn't. "I won't. I can't do that!"

"Then I'll kill your sister. And your mother. And your father. And everyone you hold dear—"

Betty stood in front of the mirror, looking at herself. She could be the Black Hood. She had it in her to let go, to be that person. And if she didn't, right now, she would be responsible for innocent people getting hurt. Or so she told herself as the name of Cheryl's attacker came out of her mouth. "Nick St. Clair. He's staying at the Five Seasons."

"I told you we were the same."

And as the line went dead, Betty could no longer deny it.

*****

Jughead had his laptop open, was trying to lose himself in the flow of words and almost succeeding, when Toni appeared in the doorway, wearing only a T-shirt. They exchanged pleasantries that were only slightly awkward before she disappeared to get dressed, smiling as though she felt they had started something together.

He tried to go back to his writing, staring at the words, but they made no sense to him now. Had he begun something with Toni last night, or had that been about ending things—ending who he had been before he became a Serpent, forcing himself to forget about Betty? Because if so, it had failed. He still felt his anger with her and his longing for her burning equally fiercely. He had gone too far with her, fallen too hard, trusted too much, for his love to die this quickly.

*****

Betty ran across town, panic pounding through her veins, aghast at what she had set in motion. When she arrived at Nick St. Clair's door and found it ajar, her heart leaped into her throat, threatening to choke her. He had done it, then. On her orders, the Black Hood had killed once more.

She was like him. She had always known it, that the darkness inside her had the power to take her down a darker road than any she had ever imagined. The Black Hood had stripped her clean, all the way down to the shadow at the center of her.

Pushing the door open, she nearly fainted with relief to see Nick St. Clair still alive, bruised and beaten by Veronica and the Pussycats, but not touched by the Black Hood.

Or, at least, not yet. Betty tried to tell him, warn him of the danger, but the sheriff arrived to take Nick to the station before she could encourage Nick and his family to get out of town, far away, out of the reach of the Black Hood.

So where did that leave her? She had given the Black Hood Nick's name; she had felt good about it at the time. Nothing had changed.

On the way home, her phone rang. Even if it wasn't the Lollipop number, she knew who was calling. "You didn't kill him," she said as she answered. It wasn't what she had meant to say—she hadn't meant to sound so disappointed.

"Nick isn't one of Riverdale's sons," the familiar voice explained. "You've already given me the most wonderful gift. When you said Nick's name, in that moment of nakedness, you let me see the real Betty. And she was beautiful. And righteous. Judge, jury, executioner."

"No," Betty protested. That wasn't her. "No! That's not— I'm— That's—"

He didn't let her continue stammering. "Now that I've seen your true self, Betty, the real work can begin."

Even as she was asking him what he meant, the line went dead, leaving her standing there wondering who she was, and where this road would take her before it ended—if it ever did.

*****

Over breakfast at Pop's, Toni set the record straight about their future as friends, making it clear that nothing more than that had begun between them, to Jughead's relief. She had seen too clearly what he had been trying to hide even from himself—that Betty Cooper was still written on his heart as permanently as the Serpents tattoo was written on his arm.

*****

Archie's text came right on top of the Hood hanging up, and Betty immediately set about lying to Archie, fluently and with the ring of truth, pretending that she was done with the Hood's games, that she understood them as cheap manipulation, when in fact there was nothing cheap about it. The Hood knew her, at a depth that no one else had ever seen. Not even Jughead, and he had seen farther into her than anyone else had before him.

For a moment, a heartbeat, she missed Jughead with all of her soul, from his sunny patches all the way down to his dark depths. But she couldn't risk his life, and she knew that the Hood was watching, that the Hood had claimed her as his own now, and wouldn't brook anyone else being close to her.

And that was when she saw them: Jughead and his little pal Toni, having breakfast together. And he looked—happy. As happy as she had ever seen him look. Well, if that was what he needed, her out of his life, maybe she shouldn't feel so bad about it, Betty thought. Maybe she shouldn't feel bad at all.