Snakes and Ladders - Falice

Because Of You

I will not make the same mistakes that you did, I will not let myself cause my heart so much misery.

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Mistakes.

The word was bouncing around Alice Cooper's mind even more than usual. Her whole life post-high school had been dedicated to trying to erase her juvenile mistakes. The days when she used to do so by controlling Betty's young life to a tee felt like decades ago. Things had been put into perspective, now.

I will not break the way you did, you fell so hard. I've learned the hard way to never let it get that far.

The first time she'd admitted out loud exactly what her problem was with Betty and Jughead dating was to FP Jones himself. "I won't have our kids make the same mistakes we did." She'd said that, word for word, and in doing so, she felt naked. It was almost a relief, to get it all off her shoulders, but it was also slightly humiliating.

It was hard for her to admit that her stone-cold attitude and pretentious ways, the fashion that she controlled Betty and Polly and the way in which she attacked the Southside in the Register all came down to FP. She knew that he was a mistake, but now she didn't know in what way. For so many years, she'd convinced herself that her biggest mistake was being with FP in the first place. She thought that their falling out was his fault, she blamed him for getting her pregnant, she put all the blame on him. Every hardships she ever faced was his fault.

But, now that certain events had unfolded, she realized that it wasn't his fault at all. If they were ever going to begin to move on from the past, they would have to stop blaming each other. Unfortunately, now, it was all a matter of pride. But, Alice had also come to realize that there was another person involved with her supposed hatred for FP Jones – Hal Cooper.

Right from the start, he'd told her that she never should have been with FP in the first place. He was the one who convinced her that the unborn child she was carrying was nothing more than a mistake that needed fixing. And every waking moment from that point on, he'd done everything in his power to shape who Alice was by convincing her who she needed to be. Perfect. Stuck in a world of pencil skirts and PTA meetings. And she had been so desperate to get away from the Southside that she'd just sat back and let him to that to her. To the point where his manipulations became subconscious – he needn't say a word.

Everything was different now. The lives of the Coopers was crumbling. Alice now realized that maybe her mistake regarding FP Jones was ever letting him go in the first place. And her mistake regarding her son was allowing Hal to convince her to give him away. A life with him wasn't worth it – she knew that now. So, her son was back with them, and that was all that mattered. Now, it wasn't about avoiding mistakes, it was about fixing the ones that had already been made.

Because of you I never stray too far from the sidewalk. Because of you I learned to play on the safe side, so I don't get hurt.

When Betty had revealed that she knew of Chic's location after all these years and Hal had refused to let Alice even think about seeing him, she knew that he was nothing more than a coward. He wasn't a man. When things didn't go his way, when his own fortune was threatened, his manipulations came out to play. Well, Alice had recently been reminded what a real man was after she'd gone running to her high school ex-boyfriend and he helped her cover up a murder to protect her family without so much as a second thought.