Train Tracks // Beronica One-Shots

The Composition of Decay

You say, I've been to the door and wept. It says, What door?

- Brenda Hillman, December Moon

Your mother always told you that guilt was the best diet pill.

Maybe that explains why you haven eaten in two days, why anything you managed to force down your throat before that climbed through the walls of your esophagus and expelled itself into the toilet. There is a searing pain coiled like a snake in the pit of your belly, determined to destroy you from the inside out.

When your mother packed up all your things into suitcases and told you that you were moving to Riverdale, her hometown, you saw it as a way to start over. You had watched your father being dragged out of your home, and something inside you had snapped. This is not okay, you thought, but then you thought about every fucked up thing you had ever done to everyone else.

This is not okay, but it is karma.

Perhaps you were stupid for looking at Riverdale as a way to start over. To leave behind Veronica Lodge and your last name's tainted legacy and start over. Have a shot at a normal childhood. Maybe you were foolish to think that the Old Veronica Lodge wouldn't follow you here too.

Because you kiss Betty as a way to make Cheryl's insides crawl.

Then you kiss Archie as a way to... you're not sure, actually. It was an instinct. The Old Veronica took over your body and mind and you royally fucked up.

You have spent a lot of time trying to atone for those sins. Trying to make things right. You comfort Cheryl, you push down any lingering feelings you might have had for Archie to protect Betty, and you take down the likes of Chuck Clayton and his army of hormonal gremlins in a desperate attempt to prove to yourself that there is some form of innate goodness in you.

It works for about a second.

Then you keep finding ugly truths about your father, and all the families he ruined to try and better his own, and his involvement with the serpents, and the possibility of him having something to do with Jason Blossom's murder, and everything you built crumbles.

Something inside you breaks.

You stop moving. Stop sleeping. Stop eating. It's all a desperate attempt to exert any semblance of control over your own life.

Because even from behind bars, Hiram Lodge can control many things, but he does not get to control your destruction. It's a way for you to look at him and say, "Look, papi, you're not the only one who can destroy me. I can destroy myself, too."

Kevin comes up to you and Betty one day in between classes and says, "Oh my god, did you hear?"

You prepare yourself to hear about whatever couple has emerged from the sweltering hell that is Riverdale High, but nothing could have prepared you for what he said next. "Remember when you went swooping in to save Ethel because you thought she might be suicidal?"

Your heart drops into your belly, "Oh no, she d-didn't..."

"No, but her dad did." The hallway starts to spin in circles around you, everything becomes a dull roar in the back of your head. "He accidentally swallowed a whole bottle of sleeping pills. He's gonna be okay, but that's why Ethel's been so sad lately. Now everybody knows..."

You can't take it. The guilt of everything your father has put the world through comes crashing into you. It's like being stuck in a slow-motion car crash all over again. You never crumble, but somehow everything that you touch does. You are, after all, your father's daughter. You have the reverse Midas touch, and everything close to you goes to shit.