Mine (a Riverdale fanfiction)

Unspeakable Things

As the holiday season approached, every day Jughead began to feel more and more like Sisyphus—pushing a rock up a hill only to have it fall down and have to start all over again. Betty wasn't speaking to him, which was for the best, he told himself again and again, but her absence was a hole in his heart that the cold wind whistled through. And his father blamed him, rightly, for the situation with Penny Peabody, but refused to let Jughead help or even know what was going on. He felt like a child, who had made messes of all his favorite things and was being punished by being made to watch the messes get worse.

He couldn't help but notice the way Betty refused to look at him when they met, the dark circles under her eyes that said she wasn't doing any better than he was—but he ruined everyone he got close to, broke their heart. He couldn't hurt her any more than he already had. He refused to.

*****

Betty woke up night after night in a cold sweat, dreaming of the Black Hood. Every dream ended the same, with her backing away as he came toward her, moving inexorably closer regardless of what obstacles stood between them.

She would lie awake the rest of the night trying to find solutions—to the mystery of the Black Hood, to Jughead's insistence that they were better apart despite the overwhelming evidence that all they were apart was miserable—and dawn would find her frustrated and sad and missing Jughead with every breath.

*****

Kevin had gone forward with the idea of a Secret Santa exchange despite all the interpersonal drama between the rest of the group, and the exchange was as difficult as Betty had feared, with Jughead standing off to the side, keeping a clear space between himself and the others.

The only thing that saved it was Archie's thoughtful gift of a book from their childhood, and the return of Moose, home from the hospital.

But as everyone else was crowding around Moose to welcome him back, Archie took off. Betty hurried after him. "Why are you rushing off?"

"Look, Betty, I don't want to be that guy, but I see Moose, all I think about is the Black Hood and the pain he's caused to the people that I care about. Including you."

"I know." She tried not to think about the Black Hood, dressed as Santa, crawling across the furniture toward her. "And the fact that he's still out there is giving me anxiety nightmares, and making me paranoid." She glanced around, feeling that too-familiar tingle on the back of her neck. "It's like everywhere I look, all I see is—" Over Archie's shoulder, she saw something strange, and she marched past him, ignoring his questions, to the unfamiliar man mopping the floor. "Excuse me. Who are you?"

He stared at her. "You mean my name?"

She glanced at Archie and back at the janitor. "Uh, where's Mr. Svensson?"

The janitor shrugged. "No idea. It's been a few days; they just called me in." He pushed past her with his mop, leaving Betty completely spooked. What if that was him? It didn't feel like him, but how would she know?

She looked at Archie. "You and Veronica confronted Mr. Svensson about his connection to the Black Hood."

"And now he's not here."

"What if something happened to him?"

"Betty, we found out Mr. Svensson's secret. What if we led the Black Hood right to him? What if we got him killed?"

Another victim; just what Riverdale needed.

*****

Jughead waited for Betty in the office of The Blue and Gold. With every minute that ticked past, he told himself this was a bad idea ... but he missed her so much that he couldn't convince himself to leave without seeing her.