Lost (in Your Emerald Eyes)

F O R T Y - T W O

Please be aware of the trigger warnings in the foreword.

☆☆☆

Jughead ran from the hospital at the phone call.

He went straight to his bike and rode to the Whyte Wyrm where a Serpent meeting was about to take place. Horrible thoughts were rummaging in his brain about everything that could have happened to Betty.

And they were even worse now that Joaquin had called him, terrified, saying the Ghoulies had taken another girl.

Jughead pushed open the door of the bar while jogging and ran right to the counter to his two best friends who were now, like everyone else, staring at him because of his dramatic entrance. "Is it Betty?" he immediately asked, not caring how loud his voice was or who could hear him.

"We don't know. Your dad's gonna start with the details in like five minutes," Toni whispered, eyes wide. "He seems restless."

"Dad," Jughead immediately said with a loud voice, gaining the attention of him and Tall Boy who were both stood on the mini stage. "Let's start now."

The older Jones didn't have any complaints, about to burst with the new information that one of their men who were inside the Ghoulies' territory most of his time had shared.

"Silence!" FP shouted, and one by one, the room started quieting down, everyone shuffling into a comfortable place, already able to tell that this meeting would be a long one.

"Another girl was kidnapped," Tall Boy stated next to him, and received an angry look from FP as everyone started whispering.

"Yes," the man sharply said. "That is true. But what is important is who she is."

"Who is she?" Jughead immediately asked and was the focus of his father's mad look as well.

"The Cooper girl," he stated.

Jughead fell onto a stool. His eyes got blurry as he stared into nothingness, not able to hear any other information or the way people immediately started gossiping. His ears started hooting in the highest note he had ever heard, and hands shaking against his jeans.

Betty had been kidnapped. She wasn't dead. But they also didn't know where she was.

And Jughead knew that if he weren't going to be fast enough, it would be better for his love to be dead rather than alive. He couldn't even think about the possibility of her already being shipped off somewhere.

"Jughead," he suddenly heard when Toni pressed her knuckles against his arm. The boy jumped a bit and turned at the girl, unaware of the tears in his somehow dry eyes.

"...the Coopers close the paper."

Jughead frowned and leaned toward Toni who was painfully aware that her best friend was out of it and hadn't been hearing anything that his father had said. The girl leaned over the counter, and almost pressed her lips against his ear. "They want to leave this case," she whispered. "She's a Cooper, they think if a family trauma happened, the paper would be closed and we'd get a better life somehow."

The boy's eyes widened and he immediately pushed himself off the stool, gaining the attention of many people as he pushed Toni's reaching hand away. "We will not do that," he spoke in an authoritative voice. "We will not let another girl die."

"She's not gonna die," Tall Boy immediately said. "She'll just have some fun with someone double her age."

He was wearing a disgusting smirk as he said that, and Jughead almost threw up. "You fucking piece of shit have become a rapist too now?"