Red moons ---Beronica (Riverdale's, Betty Cooper and Veronica Lodge)

Chapter 4: pool house

"We're done here."

Betty's voice is disturbingly nonchalant, like she doesn't really care that she was just a hair's width away from killing someone just moments ago. She's still slightly bent over the hot tub with the half-empty bottle of maple syrup in a hand that should have been trembling, but it was still hovering, stock-still, inches above her victim's head. Her eyes are pointed in Veronica's direction but the brunette knows she's somewhere else right now, somewhere she can't reach.

The brunt of the muscle relaxer is beginning to kick in; Chuck's squirming lessened significantly and while his expression is still clearly alarmed, he had stopped screaming and was now sitting defeatedly in the bubbling water. His wrists are feebly still trying to wrench themselves out of the handcuffs, and the contact of the metal against the edges of the hot tub makes sharp ticking noises that stab at the awkward silence between the pool house's three occupants.

Veronica knows she needs to say something, but there aren't any words. She just watched Betty Cooper, of all people, go all Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde on Chuck fucking Clayton - what the hell was she supposed to say?

When she gives up on finding the right words, she takes a hesitant step forward. Betty warningly shifts her eyes over to hers, a wordless don't you dare come any closer, and Veronica is horrified at how empty they look. The blue in her stare is cold, unwelcoming, and unfamiliar - so unlike the Betty Cooper Veronica knows and loves. Where is she? Where did she go?

This wasn't supposed to happen.

Sure, when Veronica mentioned going "full dark, no stars", she did mean they would teach Chuck a lesson he wouldn't soon forget, but she definitely didn't mean, "Let's incapacitate him with drugs, handcuff him to a vat full of scalding hot water, and attempt to drown him while pouring maple syrup all over his face". To be honest, all she really wanted to do was push Chuck around a little - show him what it really meant to mess with Veronica Lodge. It was a case of the old honeypot trick: Lure him in with the promise of seduction, then blackmail him into admitting he lied about the stupid sticky maple business. He wasn't the first boy she used this tactic on, and it worked like a charm. Boys like Chuck were a dime a dozen (And if she took that saying literally she would have more than enough money to bail her father out of jail and buy back all the things they lost), and she knew he would have fallen for her trap in a heartbeat. She had to dip back into "Old Veronica" in order to come up with all of this, but it had to be done. Chuck needed to learn his place in the world - and it definitely wasn't anywhere above her, or Polly, or Ethel, or any of the other girls he and his stupid bro posse humiliated in that notebook.

But when Veronica laid out her plan to Betty earlier that evening, she was taken by surprise when the taller girl gave her an all too sweet smile and a simple, "Don't worry, V. I have an idea." No explanation, not even a hint.

"So, I take it we're not going to Ethel's together later?" She remembers asking with a quirked eyebrow. She was more intrigued than concerned at the time. She had no idea.

"I'll meet you there. Promise." She remembers the look on Betty's face the moment she turned and left - the corner of her mouth lifted in a very unBetty-like smirk, the mischievous glint in her eyes - and she remembers being excited about what Betty had in store for them later. What did Betty have up her sleeve that was too tantalizing to reveal to Veronica in that moment? Oh, if she only knew.

So when Betty sauntered into the pool house later that evening with the obsidian tendrils of her black wig bouncing around her jawline, all Veronica could think of was how this was the last thing she would have expected from her.

Okay, well, if she had to be completely honest...it wasn't the only thing she was thinking about.

Veronica was also human, and she was also an adolescent human. Weird shit happens to you when you're a teenager, and sometimes feelings - among other things - invade the mind in the most inopportune moments.