Finding Love ➸ Bughead

two ♡

❝ i had a voice, had a voice,
but i could not sing.. ❞

b e t t y   c o o p e r

Betty woke with a really bad headache and noticed two things simultaneously: it was dark and she wasn't alone. Were they moving? Vision hazy, her eyes rolled around, almost out of instinct, to gain a semblance of balance, recognition of something familiar. She was in a van, her body strewn haphazardly across the floor.

Startled, she attempted to move all at once, only to find her movements sluggish and ineffectual. Betty's hands had been tied behind her back, her legs free but decidedly heavy.

Again, she tried to focus her eyes in the dark. Both back windows were heavily tinted, but even in the gloomy darkness she could make out three distinct shapes. Their voices told her that two were men, while the other was a woman. They spoke to each other in soft voices, too quiet for Betty to hear. Listening, it was a torrent of hurried speech, whispering tones. She strained to hear as much as she could, but it was no use; she couldn't distinguish what they were saying.

Her first instinct was to scream. That's what the average person would do when they found out their worst nightmare was playing out in front of them. But Betty clenched her jaw on the impulse. Did she really want them to know she was awake? No.

She was not going to do anything to alert her captors. Betty had seen enough movies, read enough books, and lived in Riverdale long enough to know that drawing attention to herself was the worst thing she could do – in almost any situation.

This was the worst of all her fears, being dragged off by some psychos in a van, taken, left for dead. From the first day of high school she realized what kind of place the world really was, she knew she would have to protect herself by all means. Betty had been careful. She followed all the rules in becoming invisible. She kept her head down, she walked fast, and she dressed sensibly. And still, this nightmare had found her. Betty could almost hear her mother's voice in her head asking her what she'd done.

The realization hit Betty: three cold-blooded kidnappers had taken her away. Tears flooded her eyes and a whimper escaped her chest. She couldn't help it.

Abruptly, the conversation around her came to a stop. Though Betty truggled to not make a single sound or movement, her lungs heaved for breath, rising and falling in the rhythm of her panic. They knew she was awake. Her tongue laid heavy and thick inside her mouth. Impulsively, Betty screamed, "Let me go," as loud as she could, as though she were dying, because for all she knew she was going to. She screamed as though someone out there would listen, hear her, and do something. Her head throbbed. "Help! Somebody help!"

Betty thrashed wildly, her legs careening in every direction as one of the men tried to capture them with his hands. As the van rocked, her captors' strange voices grew louder and angrier. Finally, Betty's foot connected solidly with the man's face. He fell back against the side of the van.

"Help!" she screamed again.

Incensed, the same man came at her again and this time struck her very hard across her left cheek. Betty's consciousness faded away, but not before she acknowledged her body, now inert and at the mercy of three strange people she didn't know. People she never wanted to know.

The next time Betty came around, rough hands dug into her underarms while another man held her legs. She was being dragged out of the van, into the night air. She must have been out for hours. Her head throbbed so hard Betty couldn't speak. The left side of her face felt like a soccer ball had smacked it and she could hardly see out of her left eye. Dizzy and with practically no warning, Betty vomited. They dropped her and I simply rolled onto my side. As she lay there dry heaving, the captors yelled amongst themselves, meaningless voices, in and out, broken and jarring. Betty's vision flashed, clear then hazy. This continued, one action triggering another. Too weak to resist, she lay her head next to her vomit and passed out again.

*

Sometime later Betty regained consciousness, or some state of being, similar to consciousness. she jerked. She felt pain everywhere. Her head throbbed, her neck was stiff to the point of searing pain, and worse, when she tried to open her eyes she discovered she couldn't. There was a blindfold over them.

It came to Betty in flashes. Screeching tires. Grinding metal. Footsteps. Running. Musk. Dirt. Dark. Vomit. Hostage.

Summoning every ounce of strength and resolve she attempted to lift herself. Why couldn't she move? Her limbs wouldn't budge. Her mind was telling her body to move, but her body wasn't responding. A new wave of panic rushed through her.

Tears burned behind her closed lids. Fearing the worst, Betty attempted to remove the blindfold by moving her head. Pain shot down her neck, but her head barely moved. What did they do to her? She stopped trying to move. Just think, she told herself, feel.

Betty took a mental assessment of herself. Her head rest on a pillow, and her entire body lay on something soft, so she was probably on a bed. A shiver ran through her. She still felt clothes against her skin – that was good. Fabric around her wrists, fabric around her ankles, it wasn't difficult to figure out she was tied to the bed. Oh god! She bit at her lip, holding in her sobs as she acknowledged the fabric of her ankle-length skirt lay high up on her thighs. Betty's legs were open. Had they touched her? Keep it together! Exhaling a deep breath, she stopped the thought before it could grow.

She felt intact, no missing fingers. Mechanically, Betty focused on here, now. Knowing her faculties were in order, she expelled a small sigh of relief that sounded more like a sob.

That's when she heard his voice.

"Good. You're finally awake. I was beginning to think you'd been seriously injured." Betty's body froze at the sound of a male voice. Suddenly, she had to instruct herself to breathe. The voice was eerily gentle, concerned...familiar? The accent, what she could comprehend over the sound of the ringing in her head was American and yet, there was something off about it.

Betty should have screamed, afraid as she was, but she just froze. He had been sitting in the room; he had been watching her panic.

After a few moments, her voice trembled, "Who are you?" No response. "Where am I?" Her words and voice seemed to be on some sort of delay, almost sluggish, like she was drunk.

Silence. The creak of a chair. Footsteps. Her heart hammering in my chest.

"It doesn't matter who I am; but I now possess you." A cold hand pressed against her sweat-slick forehead. Again, a nagging sense of familiarity. But it was stupid. Betty didn't know anyone with an accent. "You are where I want you to be."

"Do I know you?" Her voice was raw, stripped of anything but her emotion.

"Not yet."

Behind Betty's eyelids the world exploded into violent streams of red; her dark vision drowned in adrenaline. Acid fear ate down her synapses carrying Danger. Danger. Run. Run! to her limbs. Her mind howled for every muscle fiber to contract. She willed everything to fight all of the constraints: all she could muster was a twitch.

"Now, all you need is a little sleep, and then everything will be better," he whispered softly. "Everything must be better. We must do better."

And then Betty's world turned black.