Snakes and Ladders - Falice

Cleopatra

And the only gifts from my lord were a birth and a divorce. I was Cleopatra, I was taller than the rafters, but that's all in the past now, gone with the wind. But, I was late for this, late for that, late for the love of my life. And when I die alone, when I die alone, when I die I'll be on time.  

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And thus brings us to the present. As complicated as Riverdale always was and would always be, the Jones and Cooper lives were rather uneventful. FP had drunk away his wife and daughter, Alice had turned into the poisonous Northside bitch that she had made herself out to be, all was supposedly as it should be. The Southside lowlife and the Northside princess. That was only the standard for that damn town.

Everyone was on the run. FP ran from those who held prejudice and hatred for him and his people and Alice was on the run from her past. Polly ran from the people who had hurt her, Gladys and Jellybean ran from the contemptible life that they had been given, Betty ran from her own darkness, and Jughead ran from pain. All the while, Alice ran her life, or so she had thought for so long.

But, on the surface, Alice was stronger than ever. She had Hal wrapped around her finger, she had every aspect of Betty's life under control, she could keep an eye on all her neighbours through her big bay window and expose whoever she wanted in the Register. Of course, there was the wild card; Polly. To Alice's utmost horror, her teenaged daughter was pregnant with her high school sweetheart's child, it was all too familiar. And it was exactly what Alice was living to avoid.

But, if what was done was done, there was nothing more Alice could do about the pregnancy except cover its tracks. So, with some heavy prodding from her husband, Alice Cooper's daughter was presumed insane and sent off to live in the exact same group home that she had gone to when she was only a few years older than Polly. Betty was constantly asking questions, but if Alice was good at anything, it was deflecting. So, she continued to steel herself for the sake of her family's name.

Meanwhile, FP Jones was on a downward spiral as he carried a flask wherever he went and took only odd and usually dangerous jobs around the Southside. His wife had left with his daughter, and only about a year later, Jughead had decided he couldn't take any more of FP's bad decisions, so he moved out. Fifteen years old and living on the streets, it was far from ideal. But, then again, the Jones' never had been considered anything close to ideal.

They saw no more of each other, not since FP had abandoned anything that had to do with Jughead's schooling years ago and their children were old enough to walk to Pop's whenever they wanted to hang out. Life went on, that was the moral of the story. Even if it was hard, it persisted. FP never crossed over onto the Northside and God forbid should Alice ever be caught dead entering Southside territory.

Alice was just pleased that her own marriage had managed to persist through admittedly tense times. She took great pleasure in knowing that FP and Gladys' marriage had fallen apart, as did Fred and Mary's, Sierra and Myles' was on the brink of failure, Tom was in the same boat, and God only knows where Hermione was now that Hiram was incarcerated. Alice would sit at her kitchen table with a smug smile on her face as she stirred her tea and looked down her street through the window, how far she had come.

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When Jason Blossom was announced dead, everything changed. After his Sweetwater River accident, Riverdale – and the people in it – could no longer hide the darkness that their town secretly held. The day that Dilton found Cheryl, soaking wet and shaking, the whole town had practically dropped everything to witness Sheriff Keller dragging the river. Alice remembered the chill that ran up her spine as she stood darkly next to her husband. "If he is dead, Hal..." she had begun, lowering her eyebrows in severity. "...I hope in those last moments, he suffered." Was this who she was now? Someone who held a grudge even after a teenage boy had tragically perished? Apparently. "May Jason Blossom burn in hell." Even Hal was surprised at her cruelty, glancing over at her uncertainly.