Taken- A Bughead Fanific

Chapter 11: Hope

JUGHEAD POV:

I lazily opened my eyes to everything being alright. Everything was okay, just fine. In the corner of my eye, I noticed a man sitting across from me in a chair: it was my dad. I was getting de ja vu from the last time I was in the hospital; the only difference now is that I had a throbbing pain in my leg. I lifted the covers to find my thigh bandaged up. A dark patch of crimson stained the middle of it. Just then, everything hit me. Penny. Me. Betty.

Betty.

I winced in both physical and emotional pain, realizing nothing was okay.

"Jughead," my dad whispered, startling me.

I kept my eyes squinched when I heard my name again, then a familiar hand latched onto my arm.

"Jug" I heard a voice whisper into my ear. I opened my eyes to the familiar, welcoming voice. Before me lied a girl with blonde curls effortlessly falling from her head. Her skin glowed and her Ora was warm and inviting. Despite her beauty, her eyes screamed at me. They screamed pain. They screamed horror. They screamed reconciliation and desperation to connect. She is lost. Lost in a world I am not familiar with. Her hand suddenly gripped tighter on my forearm, her eyes widening even more; I am her only hope.

"Betty," I stammered back.

The girl kept her eyes locked to mine, searching. Searching for. . .
Life. Air. Strength. Vitalization.

I knew this feeling and I knew it well. My heart sunk to my stomach. I cannot move; I cannot help her.

Suddenly, her eyes slowly moved over to the wall on my right, but I can't see what she is looking at. Any other feeling but fear swam away from her eyes in a hurried frenzy, making room for the horror that would suck everything up and take it as their own. I watched as her eyes flickered into two black holes.

My arm started hurting from her tightened grip. I lay stuck. I lay glued to the wretched bed. Consequently, I am forced to study her instead of help, or prevent, or stop, or do whatever I needed to do to make it all go away.

Make it all go away.

"I'm sorry!" I wept as she shrieked. Her screams crawled in my brain like a maggot, making itself at home, "I'm sorry," I cried out again. Keeping her eyes affixed on the right of me, she replied as If at a loss, "there is nothing you can do, Jughead. Stop trying. Just close your eyes. Close them."

"I can't" I whispered back.

"You can, you will," Betty demanded.

"I can't!" I screamed at her. I could feel the tendons in my neck tensing up from the violent tone I used, "I can't, I can't-"

"You must." She had collected her self, passed tears collecting at the base of her jawline.

"What don't you want me to see?" I questioned, not expecting an answer back.

She paused. Her eyes finally ventured back down into mine, "me."

I took a sharp inhale of breath, gasping for more than air. My body was mobile once again. The florescent lights violated my eyeballs. My friends stood over me, concerned looks draped across their faces.

"Are you okay? Should I get a nurse?" Veronica looked at me and then impatiently questioned Archie, "we should get him a nurse."

I shooed her away like an irrelevant bug, "No, no that's alright," I carefully laid back down, "Just a dream."

"Are you sure?" Archie asked. I quickly nodded back. Veronica, defeated, sunk into a cheap armchair in the corner of the room. Archie handed me a warm cup of stale coffee. I gladly chugged it down. On the last gulp, Ronnie opened her mouth, then closed it, then opened it again. Her hesitance unsettled me a bit; this was unlike Veronica Lodge.

Archie decided to go ahead and bite the bullet, "So Betty-"

I didn't wait for him to continue, "Yeah, I know. She isn't doing good. I know."

Archie studied me, puzzled.

"How did you?" His train of thought was lost as he looked at my arm, "What the?"

He gestured at it. I looked down. A bruise sat on my arm in the shape of a hand. I flipped my arm over to the other side. Fingers wrapped around it followed by crescent moons etched into the skin.

"It was Betty," I shrugged, "she came to me."

In a non-judgemental way, Ronnie asked what she said.

"That there is nothing I can do," I said flatly, "except hope."